Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Scale   Listen
noun
Scale  n.  
1.
(Anat.) One of the small, thin, membranous, bony or horny pieces which form the covering of many fishes and reptiles, and some mammals, belonging to the dermal part of the skeleton, or dermoskeleton. See Cycloid, Ctenoid, and Ganoid. "Fish that, with their fins and shining scales, Glide under the green wave."
2.
Hence, any layer or leaf of metal or other material, resembling in size and thinness the scale of a fish; as, a scale of iron, of bone, etc.
3.
(Zool.) One of the small scalelike structures covering parts of some invertebrates, as those on the wings of Lepidoptera and on the body of Thysanura; the elytra of certain annelids. See Lepidoptera.
4.
(Zool.) A scale insect. (See below.)
5.
(Bot.) A small appendage like a rudimentary leaf, resembling the scales of a fish in form, and often in arrangement; as, the scale of a bud, of a pine cone, and the like. The name is also given to the chaff on the stems of ferns.
6.
The thin metallic side plate of the handle of a pocketknife.
7.
An incrustation deposit on the inside of a vessel in which water is heated, as a steam boiler.
8.
(Metal.) The thin oxide which forms on the surface of iron forgings. It consists essentially of the magnetic oxide, Fe3O4. Also, a similar coating upon other metals.
Covering scale (Zool.), a hydrophyllium.
Ganoid scale. (Zool.) See under Ganoid.
Scale armor (Mil.), armor made of small metallic scales overlapping, and fastened upon leather or cloth.
Scale beetle (Zool.), the tiger beetle.
Scale carp (Zool.), a carp having normal scales.
Scale insect (Zool.), any one of numerous species of small hemipterous insects belonging to the family Coccidae, in which the females, when adult, become more or less scalelike in form. They are found upon the leaves and twigs of various trees and shrubs, and often do great damage to fruit trees. See Orange scale,under Orange.
Scale moss (Bot.), any leafy-stemmed moss of the order Hepaticae; so called from the small imbricated scalelike leaves of most of the species. See Hepatica, 2, and Jungermannia.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Scale" Quotes from Famous Books



... than it could use. Jackson therefore called upon Congress to revise the tariff system so as to reduce the revenue, and in the session of 1831-32 several bills to that end were brought forward. The scale of duties finally embodied in the Act of July 14, 1832, corrected many of the anomalies of the Act of 1828, but it cut off some millions of revenue without making any substantial change in the protective system. Virginia and North Carolina voted heavily for the bill, but South Carolina and Georgia ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg

... talking about business to his son, had a curious reticence about money affairs, and had never prepared him for the scantiness of the provision that he had accumulated. Hugh saw at once that the utmost care would have for the future to be exercised, and that their whole scale of life must be altered. The fact was that his father's professional income had been ample, and that he had had a strong dislike to saving money from ecclesiastical sources. The home must evidently ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... is entitled Die Baumzucht im Grossen (the Cultivation of Trees on the Grand Scale): it came to a second ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... one of the events of the season to the social world of that foreign town, but to us it is one of the events of the century. On an evening in June, 1815, in the city of Brussels, the Duchess of Richmond gave a ball on so magnificent a scale that even the gray heads of society's veteran devotees were a little turned, and the chestnut and golden pates of their juniors tossed sleeplessly on their pillows for several nights preceding it. After all, humanity is perpetually and overpoweringly interested ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam

... nature, some light might perhaps be thrown on the whole subject. My first note-book was opened in July 1837. I worked on true Baconian principles, and without any theory collected facts on a wholesale scale, more especially with respect to domesticated productions, by printed enquiries, by conversation with skilful breeders and gardeners, and by extensive reading. When I see the list of books of all kinds which I read and abstracted, including whole series ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... the above-mentioned total eclipse of the sun, but exact determinations could not be made at that time, because the tasimeter adjustment was too delicate, and at the best the galvanometer deflections were so marked that they could not be kept within the limits of the scale. The sensitiveness of the instrument may be easily comprehended when it is stated that the heat of the hand thirty feet away from the cone-like funnel of the tasimeter will so affect the galvanometer as to cause the spot of light to ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... scale of laughter that seemed to have no organs wherewith to function in the open, and so never ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale

... now as if he could run a mile, scale a ten-foot wall, sing a song. Only a few minutes ago he was next door to a corpse, done up, unable to stand, to lift a hand; unable to groan. A drop of water had ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad

... in West Chester and Long Island parlance, means something that might be better termed a "head and shoulders," if mere shape and dimensions are kept in view. Peninsula would be the true word, were we describing things on a geographical scale; but, as they are, I find it necessary to adhere to the local term, which is not altogether peculiar to our county, by the way. The "neck" or peninsula of Satanstoe, contains just four hundred and sixty-three acres and a half of excellent West Chester land; and that, ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... Goethe, and after his death published letters alleged to have been sent to her by him. She also gave the world certain letters said to have come to her from Beethoven. It has been pretty well proved that the naive Bettina was an ardent and painstaking forger on a large scale. She included a series of sonnets which were written to another of Goethe's "garden of girls" before he ever met Bettina. But she appears to have vitiated her clever forgeries by a certain alloy of truth, and it may be that her Beethoven letters are, after all, fictions ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes

... with Alice Paul, at that moment being forcibly fed by men jailers and men doctors. I remembered then the man warden who had refused the highly reasonable request to visit her, and my thoughts kept right on up the scale till I got to the man-President-the pinnacle of power against us. I was indeed desolate. I walked back to the hidden taxi, hurried to headquarters, and plunged into my work, trying all night to convince myself that the sting of my wretchedness was being mitigated ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens

... important mistake, in his own case. Not satisfied with the symmetry and elegance of form given him by his Creator, he transforms himself into a hideous monster, or copies upon his own person, the proportions of some disgusting creature, far down in the scale of animal being. Not content with loving one thing and loathing another, he perseveres in his attempts to make bitter sweet, and sweet bitter, till nothing but the shadow is left, of his primitive relishes and aversions. ...
— An Essay on the Influence of Tobacco upon Life and Health • R. D. Mussey

... reach, on the ledge above his head, the female eagle lay stunned and broken-winged, but still alive. To scale the cliff was not possible, for here it sloped sharply out over its base, where it had been worn smooth by the stream at some previous age when the water was swollen higher. There were no trailing vines or overhanging saplings strong enough to bear Ralph's weight; but, foreseeing this ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler

... herself bigger and bigger and bigger, till she was as big as she had been when she sat and sucked her thumb in the hall of the ruined palace. "I am the heavier," she shouted, and gnashed her iron teeth. Then she jumped into the other scale. ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome

... ancient salt, protected from the air and dust by a brown paper lid, through which a piece of knotted string was passed to serve as a knob. The walls were whitewashed, and hanging against them were a pair of printed cards, which on examination I found to be the dietary scale and the rules and regulations. The floor was black and shiny. It was probably concreted, and I discovered the next day that it was blackleaded and polished. Finally I detected an iron ring in each wall, facing each other, ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote

... security. The earth it self shall tremble, and the shock Make mountains cleft against each other knock. Marcellus guide the laws, Curior the crowd, Let Lentulus inspire the warlike god. But why is't Caesar such slow measures takes? Not scale the walls? Nor force th' aspiring gates, Nor to the town, nor to the treasure makes? At Rome, if Pompey fears th' approaching foe, Let him to fatal Epidamnum go: Fill all its plains with blood. Thus Discord said, And impious earth her ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter

... the proud eagle soaring to the skies, Intent "the topmost arch" of heaven to scale, When heeding naught that would oppose its rise, It breaks with fearless nerve the tempest-gale— And spreads its wings like a majestic sail, Full on the bosom of the raging blast, Thy spirit soar'd—but ah! too like us frail, When the same ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various

... in the Bay of Islands, missed some articles on board his schooner. He at once had the chief Koro Koro, who happened to be on board, seized and bound hand and foot in the cabin. Koro Koro, who was noted both for strength and hot temper,P Land. They were varied by tragedies on a larger scale. In 1809 the Boyd, a ship of 500 tons—John Thompson, master—had discharged a shipload of English convicts in Sydney. The captain decided to take in a cargo of timber in New Zealand, and accordingly sailed to Whangaroa, a romantic inlet to the north of the Bay of Islands. ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... was delivered in the author's usual modest strain, but unconsciously it was expressive of himself and his whole-hearted thoroughness. He stands very high in the scale of human beings—how high I scarcely knew till the experience of the ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... is accompanied with a centigrade thermometer, by which the heat is regulated. Those furnished by the manufacturers are not always correct, and it requires some experience to find the proper degree on the scale. ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey

... dust and grime. The big house wanted some such intervention, as since the butler's departure it had become rather slovenly, save in the portions occupied by Mrs. Rossiter. Charwomen were got in, and spring cleanings on a gigantic scale took place, so that when Rossiter did return he thought it had never looked so nice, or his Linda been so ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... to-day, and when clothes and furniture cost fifty per cent. more than now, the average working-man cannot be otherwise described than as distinctly poor when compared with his English colleague. Yet it would be misleading to judge exclusively by the scale of wages, and against making comparisons of the kind the reader should at once be warned. The fact is that there are very wide divergences of condition amongst the working classes of Holland. A carpenter or a blacksmith earning from L1 to L1 10s. in weekly wages all the year ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough

... deformed man was in nowise pleased with such a comparison of his acquirements, and answered by saying, it did not become him to hold argument with a man, however high his military position, who would place genius in the scale with brute instinct. Seeing the pain he had caused the little man, the major said he meant no offence, and was ready to get upon his knees, dissolved in tears, if that were necessary to a good and sufficient apology. In fine, it must be said of the major, that, although he was at times ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... embroideries by the sopranists and the prima donnas that followed them. Slow movements, which ought to breathe a spirit of melancholy, appear to have been especially selected as background for these vocal fireworks. I need not dwell on the unnaturalness of this style. To run up and down the scale wildly and persistently in singing a slow and sad song, is as consistent as it would be for an orator to grin and yodle while ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck

... evidence which over-specialisation in one direction and neglect in other directions supply to anthropology. It shows us that human societies cannot always be measured in the scale of culture by the most apparent of the social elements contained in them. The cannibalism of the Fijians, the art products of the Maori, the totemism of the Australian blacks, do not express all that makes up the culture of these people, ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... pastures where a brook lazily finds its way through the farm is the ideal pleasure ground of this "bird of society." His notes, "h'-wa-ker-ee" or "con-quer-ee" (on an ascending scale), are liquid in quality, suggesting the sweet, moist, cool retreats where he nests. Liking either heat or cold (he is fond of wintering in Florida, but often retreats to the north while the marshes are still frozen); enjoying not only the ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan

... and other favoured towns there are streets of nothing but retired British generals—squares of retired British generals—whole crescents of British generals. Abroad there are pensions with a special scale of charges for British generals. In Switzerland there has even been talk of reserving railway compartments "For British Generals Only." In Germany, when you do not say distinctly and emphatically on being introduced that you are not a British general, you are assumed, as a matter ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome

... the young bride and bridegroom remained for two years at the home of the bride's father, and preparations were made for restoring the glories of Dilston on an extensive scale. On Derwentwater's return to his beautiful Northumbrian seat in 1714, the death of Queen Anne had excited the hopes of all the friends of the house of Stuart, and plots and secret meetings were being planned throughout Scotland and the north ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry

... bribe by which it was purchased, and the manner in which it was forced on Ireland, represented the injustice of the whole system of Irish administration, and the wrongs of many generations. "It would be very hard if all Ireland," Swift declares with indignation, "should be put into one scale, and this sorry fellow Wood into the other." "I have a pretty good shop of Irish stuffs and silks," the Drapier declares, "and instead of taking Mr. Wood's bad copper, I intend to truck with my neighbors, the butchers and bakers and brewers, ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... work. I am convinced by experience, too, that the dormant spray, usually neglected by most growers, is very necessary and am sure better and healthier foliage is obtained by this practice, and by it the scale can be controlled in ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various

... was to get them to a road indicated on the map over in that direction," replied Lieutenant Sterling, pointing over towards the one by which the Riverlawns had come from Jamestown. "According to the scale on my map it is ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic

... buy furniture (four sovereigns it cost in all), and thus to allow herself the luxury of two rooms at the rent she previously paid for one. Miss Barfoot did not remunerate her workers on a philanthropic scale, but strictly in accordance with market prices; common sense dictated this principle. In talking over their arrangements, Monica decided to expend a few shillings on the purchase of a ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing

... from the smooth floor, a heavy slab of granite six feet long and two wide and six inches thick, elaborately carved on the edges, the design being entwined serpents, the heads laying over the ends with closed mouths and open eyes. They were represented as being scaly, and each scale was chiseled with some strange device, all differing in shape and finish. On this slab lay a flint, the edges sharp, hollowed into a slightly oval form, being made into a sharp and thin scoop with the shape of ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle

... were on the grandest scale. The body was to be taken from Sandsgaard and laid in the church, where Dean Sparre was to deliver a discourse, while the chaplain was to conduct the funeral ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland

... years the most admired tragic actress in France. In that age actors and actresses in France were exposed to singular insults. M. Lacroix, in his "France in the Eighteenth Century," tells us: "They were considered as inferior beings in the social scale; excommunicated by the Church, and banished from society, they were compelled to endure all the humiliations and affronts which the public chose to inflict on them in the theatre; and, if any of them had ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole

... gold that was higher than all the world drew near to Rodriguez and Morano they felt its unearthly menace; and though it could not overcome their spirits they knew there was a hideous terror about it. It was in its awful scale that its terror lurked for any creature of our planet. Though they could not quake or tremble they felt that terror. ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany

... points of the double wall, one of them being the southern gate. In front of the advancing columns of savages were driven vast numbers of slaves, many of whom had been captured, or had surrendered in the outer town. These men were laden with faggots to fill the ditch, rude ladders wherewith to scale the walls, and heavy trunks of trees to be used in breaching them. For the most part, they were unarmed, and protected only by their burdens, which they held before them as shields, and by the arrows of the warriors of Ithobal. But these did little harm to the defenders, who were hidden behind the ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard

... and knew a good deal of music; so that, barring a certain nervousness in the performer, the exhibition was really not bad. In his singing he had used a meaningless gibberish varied with the syllables of the scale, but he closed by singing the words, "Are you ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... the most humane and noble. He had done whatever his slender abilities permitted to bring into discredit large-hearted and devoted men and women whom history will honorably remember as New-England Reformers. But to lead anything on a large scale, without a continual winding-up by his companion, the fibrous Mrs. Romulus, was beyond the crassitude of Stellato's pursy nature. Now it had come to pass that this acidulated lady, essaying fresh ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... he said, "upon us all—upon all of us, that is, who step out into the open where the winds of life are blowing. Look at me! I weighed eighteen stone when I left England. I had the muscles of a prize fighter and nerves of steel. Today I turn the scale at ten stone and am afraid to be alone in ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... a ledge above the waterfall again, having come through a projection on the cliff's side, for Khinjan is all rat-runs and projections, like a sponge or a hornet's nest on a titanic scale. ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy

... equable reply. "We can afford to hear a few harsh words when we are making money on such a scale." ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Probably the architect was tempted to this introduction for the sake of picturesque variety, since it is not justifiable on the score of architectural beauty or good taste. Indeed, it is an attempt at magnificence which, on so small a scale, is not deserving of imitation, and has not been followed. The general effect is far from pleasing; but the eye of the landscape painter will probably enjoy an assemblage of picturesque outlines in grouping Sussex Place with its adjacent scenery and accessories. The gardens to this terrace are tastefully ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various

... if he might be able to extend just a little. Perhaps he could operate on a wider scale. There should be some way he could work out to take over a neighboring ...
— The Weakling • Everett B. Cole

... conviction flows; And strengthen'd confidence shall hence fulfil (With conscious innocence, more valued still) The dreariest task that winter nights can bring, By church-yard dark, or grove, or fairy ring; Still buoying up the timid mind of youth, Till loit'ring reason hoists the scale of truth. With those blest guardians, Giles his course pursues, Till numbering his heavy-sided ewes, Surrounding stilness tranquillize his breast, And shape the dreams that wait his hours ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor

... them will bring about the consummation. This is not probable, for angry as they may be, they will still prefer Melbourne to Peel, and O'Connell (who is all moderation) will throw Ireland into the scale and entreat them for Ireland's sake to lay aside their resentment. Such questions as the Ballot can only be carried by the desire for them gaining ground largely throughout the country, and this many assert ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... department had an administrative council composed of thirty-six members, and an executive directory composed of five members: as the names indicate, the functions of the one were to decide, and of the other to act. The district was organised in the same way; although on a smaller scale, it had a council and a directory, fewer in number, and subordinate to the superior directory and council. The canton composed of five or six parishes, was an electoral not an administrative division; the active citizens, and to be considered such it was necessary to pay taxes amounting ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet

... Hermit's situation was growing more uncomfortable. One of the cubs seemed to have made up his mind that the man had more sugar, which he was deliberately keeping from them. Accordingly he attempted to scale the Hermit as he would a tree, a proceeding to which the man objected most emphatically. The cub was big and heavy and his claws were sharp. With a yell the man dislodged ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer

... their places among the more formal figures of the mural decorator's art. Stone vessels were much in evidence as well as ornaments of gold and the skins of many animals, but nowhere did he see an indication of any woven fabric, indicating that in that respect at least the Ho-don were still low in the scale of evolution, and yet the proportions and symmetry of the corridors and apartments bespoke ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... henceforth only by using whatever destructive agencies they can invent, till the resources and inventions of science end by destroying the humanity they were meant to serve." Leagues of nations are proposed, organization for peace on a scale commensurate with the past organization for war is recognized as the ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... a private lunatic asylum is unique. A little push behind your back and you slide into one; but to get out again is to scale a precipice with crumbling sides. Alfred, luckier than many, had twice nearly escaped; yet now he was tighter in than ever. His father at first meant to give him but a year or two of it, and let him out on terms, his spirit broken ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... not long to wait for the crash. The firm of Claparon did business on too large a scale, the capital was locked up, the concern ceased to serve its purposes, or to pay dividends, though the speculations were sound. These misfortunes coincided with the events of 1827. In 1829 it was too well known that Claparon was a man of straw set up by the two giants; he ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac

... a contemptible bit of rascality in my life. I have told my father ever since I came home that these men had bad faces, and I have looked carefully for traces of cheating in their accounts. But they were too cowardly to try it on a large scale.' ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson

... among its companions and settle on the top of the inside of the hive, turning herself round and round, so as to push the other bees back, and to make a space in which she can work. Then she will begin to pick at the under part of her body with her fore-legs, and will bring a scale of wax from a curious sort of pocket under her abdomen. Holding this wax in her claws, she will bite it with her hard, pointed upper jaws, which move to and fro sideways like a pair of pincers, then, moistening ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley

... presumably in his Laocoon, has attributed this to the effects of sheer panic; but Carver's explanation, which attributes the ochre-like tint to the hypodermic operation of the Mash-Glance, seems far more plausible. For myself I abstain from casting the weight of my support in either scale, because my particular province is speculative ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas

... monsieur," he continued, while the dun penumbra still more and more withdrew him from Leclair's sight, "that great lacunae exist in the scale of vibratory phenomena. Some of the so-called lower animals take cognizance of vibrations that mean nothing to us. Insects hear notes far above our dull ears. Ants are susceptible to lights and colors unseen to our limited eyes. The emperor-moth calls its mate—so says Fabre—by means ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... footprints, and compared them with these from the sand. There are several important differences, which you will see if you compare them. To facilitate the comparison I have made transparent photographs of both sets of moulds to the same scale. Now, if we put the photograph of the mould of the prisoner's right shoe over that of the murderer's right shoe, and hold the two superposed photographs up to the light, we cannot make the two pictures coincide. They are exactly of the same length, but the shoes are of different ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman

... the background, was seen to emerge from the thatched cottage. The man hid himself behind a clump of trees. From time to time, the screen displayed, on an enormously enlarged scale, his fiercely rolling eyes or his murderous hands with their ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc

... made by an axe, and carrying a fly-book and a trout-rod which is an infinitely precious trout-rod? Also, a share of the midday lunch and twenty pounds more weight than you ought to have by the beauty-scale? Because, unless you have, you will ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... love with him. How many shades there are between love and indifference, and how little the graduated scale is understood! She had now been nearly three weeks in the same house with Mr Arabin, and had received much of his attention, and listened daily to his conversation. He had usually devoted at least some portion of his evening to her exclusively. At Dr Stanhope's he had devoted himself ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... was served on a most magnificent scale, wore itself away, as all big county-dinners do, in bursts of sedate but not profoundly interesting conversation. Indeed, had it not been for the novelty of the sight, Maria would have been rather bored, ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... criminal statistics of various countries, it follows as a matter of course that the figures contained in them cannot be used as a means of ascertaining the position which belongs to each nation respectively in the scale of morality. Nor is the moral progress of a nation to be measured solely by an apparent decay of crime. On the contrary, an increase in the amount of crime may be the direct result of a moral advance in the average sentiments of the community. The passing of the Elementary Education ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison

... been aroused lately in scientific and industrial circles by a report that separation of the oxygen and nitrogen of the air was being effected on a large scale in London by a process which promises to render the gases available for general application in the arts. The cheap manufacture of the compounds of nitrogen from the gas itself is still a dream of chemical enthusiasts; ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various

... pounding of the oil-motors—only more insistent and irritating. The penetrating hum in the various vents announced the fact that the diving mechanism was in operation. It moaned and sang lower and lower in the scale of tones. These slowly diminishing and steadily deepening tones give one the physical feeling of mighty volumes of water pouring in and ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot

... that contemplated at the outset of your political life. Manifestly, those who framed your Constitution never dreamed that twenty thousand citizens would go to the poll led by a "boss." America exemplifies at the other end of the social scale, a change analogous to that which has taken place under sundry despotisms. You know that in Japan, before the recent Revolution, the divine ruler, the Mikado, nominally supreme, was practically a puppet in the hands of his chief minister, the Shogun. ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... blew up only a portion of the counterscarp. Unluckily for the French, the place had received a reinforcement of several thousand men, a great number of gunners trained after the European fashion, and immense supplies. It was a siege on a large scale to be carried on with thirteen thousand men, almost entirely destitute of artillery. It was necessary to open a new mine to blow up the entire counterscarp, and to ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... at it as a whole it's as inharmonious as a high, huge stage with its tiny figures before the footlights. It's quite out of scale as a setting for the human form. It's awfully ugly, and ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... people a literal version of the saga, if mayhap that strenuous paucity might translate the old spirit. But, as if he knew that many readers would fail to make much of this version, he tried again on a larger scale, and the great volume Sigurd the Volsung, epic in character and proportions, was the result. Of these two we shall ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby

... consecutively. The effect of this would have been droll to a listener, the note of the prospectus mingling with the question of his more intimate hope. But it was not droll to Francie; she only thought it, or supposed it, a proof of the way Mr. Flack saw everything on a stupendous scale. "There are ten thousand things to do that haven't been done, and I'm going to do them. The society-news of every quarter of the globe, furnished by the prominent members themselves—oh THEY can be fixed, you'll see!—from day to day and from hour ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James

... works out differently. The prostitute simply has to pay extravagantly high rents, so that her landlord really lives on the fruits of her trade, while she has to carry on her business with increased activity and on a larger scale in order to cover her heavy expenses (P. Hausmeister, "Zur Analyse der Prostitution," Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, vol. ii, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... of intelligence, attentive to education, encouraging morality, obedient to the laws, the people of Hingham have always stood high in the scale of social enjoyment and prosperity. Its town meetings are models of democratic government, and there are few places in which this purely American institution is preserved with so much respect and true regard for the ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various

... to keep all to herself, while entertained in full state by her hosts. Perhaps Adeline would have liked something on a smaller scale, for she knew what was ostentatious; but though Mr. White had once lived in a corner of the castle, almost like an artisan; since he had married, it had become his pride to treat his guests on the ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge

... me that evening, merely saying that I had seen enough company for one day. My sleep that night resulted from opiates instead of nature's impulses, and so was unrefreshing, and the doctor was surprised to find a change for the worse the following morning. For two or three days the scale wavered, and I scarcely held what I had gained. Mrs. Yocomb rarely left me, and I believe that I owe my life not only to her excellent nursing, but even more to her strong moral support—her gentle ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe

... of game found in Douglas Dale on this occasion was very considerable, for, as already noticed, it was a long time since a hunting upon a great scale had been attempted under the Douglasses themselves, whose misfortunes had commenced several years before, with those of their country. The English garrison, too, had not sooner judged themselves strong or numerous enough to exercise these valued ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... thing now might tip the scale for life or death, and while at the head of the veranda steps she spoke of happiness her distressed thought was of Hilary's madcap audacity, how near at hand he might be even then, under what fearful risk of recognition and capture. She was keenly glad to hear ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... for instance, have no opportunity of teaching on an enlarged scale, or even of taking a class at a Sunday-school, or of instructing any of your poor neighbours in reading or in the word of God. Such labours of love may, it is possible, though not probable, be shut out of your reach: if, however, you are on the watch for opportunities, (and we are best made ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady

... the great upheaval of Fawns. This residence was to be peopled for a month by porters, packers and hammerers, at whose operations it had become peculiarly public—public that is for Portland Place—that Charlotte was to preside in force; operations the quite awful appointed scale and style of which had at no moment loomed so large to Maggie's mind as one day when the dear Assinghams swam back into her ken besprinkled with sawdust and looking as pale as if they had seen Samson pull down the temple. They had seen at least what she was not seeing, rich dim things under the ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... city of Washington, the great American capital, had been laid out on a magnificent scale, in 1791, and George Washington, with masonic ceremonies, laid the corner-stone of the capitol building in 1793, the seat of government was not removed there until the year 1800. The site for the city was a dreary one. ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,

... five main valves having their free apices, diverging and truncated. The upper and old layers of shell do not here scale off so readily as in many of the foregoing species; and hence an unusually large proportional length of each valve projects freely above the sack; and the valves are of unusual thickness. The capitulum is very nearly as wide at its summit ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin

... wondered Betty, and became a little anxious as the others began to rise, too, and were excused. "Have we got to change? What is it—the movies? Or a party? Of course, it isn't skating? Even if there was a little scale of ice last night, it would never in this world bear us," ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson

... would you have? To run through the entire social scale was always my dream. Yesterday I was gathering flowers and singing songs, today I wield the rod of justice and serve ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... to good business policy; but Robert was younger and his blood hotter. It happened, also, a month later, when he began to see that business had fallen off considerably (indeed, it was the beginning of a period of extreme business depression), and that he could no longer continue on the same scale with the same profits, that instead of assembling the men in different departments, communicating the situation to them, and submitting them a reduced price-list for consideration, as was the custom ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... France knew that Germany had for years been preparing for aggression on a large scale. They knew that she would strike when she felt that she was readiest and her opponents of the Triple ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin

... Industries: small-scale production of textiles, soap, furniture, shoes, fertilizer, and cement; handwoven carpets; natural gas, ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... all there is not given Strength for such sublime endeavor, Thus to scale the walls of heaven, And to leaven with fiery leaven All the hearts of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... dresses and trim her own bonnets. She would have to do without a maid. And all this means that she would have virtually to renounce her caste, to give up the society of her equals, who demand a certain scale of appearances, and to live among pariahs or to live in isolation. Don't you think a man would be a monster of ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland

... There is trade enough in the World for the Industry both of Britain and Ireland, and if two or three places either in South or North Britain should suffer some damage, which, by the bye, will be very gradual, from the loss of their monopoly, that is a very small consideration in the general scale and policy of the country. The only thing to be guarded against is the people in Ireland being able to undersell us in foreign mercates from the want of taxes and the cheapness of Labour. But a wise statesman will be able to regulate that by proper distribution of taxes upon the materials ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae

... member of the Junior United Service Club in London, a man who neither shoots nor fishes, had been suddenly seized in his mature years with a desire to hire an isolated country house in Perthshire, in the depths of winter, for the purpose of trying his 'prentice hand upon rabbit-shooting on a small scale. ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various

... that extent, the art of navigation. So in science, one fossil of a different species from any found heretofore in a certain deposit is sufficient to add another to the forms of life represented by that deposit. One fossil found lower in the geological scale than life was supposed to have begun on this planet, is sufficient to prove that it had a still earlier beginning. So with regard to contemporary forms of life, one fact may be sufficient to warrant or compel a conclusion. Hugh Miller ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with 80% of the population living under the poverty line and 54% in abject poverty. Two-thirds of all Haitians depend on the agriculture sector, mainly small-scale subsistence farming, and remain vulnerable to damage from frequent natural disasters, exacerbated by the country's widespread deforestation. A macroeconomic program developed in 2005 with the help of the International Monetary Fund helped the economy grow 1.8% in 2006, the ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... greater credit because his early disadvantages as an orphan, dependent on his own exertions for a livelihood, had been so great that he had entered college with difficulty, and with heavy conditions. This turned the scale with a committee who had all been poor boys themselves, and justly feared the encroachments of hereditary aristocracy. They perhaps had their misgivings when the young man, in his well-blacked boots, his gray trousers neatly fitting over them, and ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells

... other ship seemed no less eager to engage in battle, and in a very short time grappling-irons were thrown out and the ships were fastened close together. Then a fierce combat followed between the two crews as each in turn tried to scale the sides of the ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland

... counsels, noble Abdelmelech, move My reason to accept them, not my love. Ah, why did heaven leave man so weak defence, To trust frail reason with the rule of sense! 'Tis over-poised and kicked up in the air, While sense weighs down the scale, and keeps it there; Or, like a captive king, 'tis borne away, And forced to countenance ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... after the battle, was spent in following up the line of the retreating foe, and collecting the large supplies of arms, of ammunition, and other military stores. The supplies of the army were on a scale of such luxurious extravagance as to excite the surprise of those accustomed only to our rigid economy. The anticipation of an easy victory had caused many to come to the battle as to a joyous feast, and the signs left behind them of the extent to ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... was but a couple of hours old, I was weary. This business of hotel-keeping on so large it scale with so little assistance was beginning to tell on my strength. I opened the gate and told George and Leon to welcome any who wished to come in, and then repairing to the kitchen, I sat down and began helping the others prepare vegetables. The discovery that in spite of all their good will guests ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard

... dark moorland and sallow down, cut by the deep warm lanes where hardly a leaf stirs on a windy day. It is not so much a landscape as the fragments of many landscapes, samples in little of the things that Nature does elsewhere on a grand scale. The effect on a stranger is at first alluring, captivating, like the caprices of a beautiful woman; then it becomes disconcerting, maddening, fatiguing; and a great longing seizes him for vast ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... in extent of civilization, they differed widely as to the nature of it; and the philosophical student of his species may feel a natural curiosity to trace the different steps by which these two nations strove to emerge from the state of barbarism, and place themselves on a higher point in the scale of humanity.—In a former work I have endeavored to exhibit the institutions and character of the ancient Mexicans, and the story of their conquest by the Spaniards. The present will be devoted to the Peruvians; and, if their history shall be found to present ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... filling was continued without any visible embankment having been made. It was the duty of the resident engineer to proceed to Liverpool every fortnight to obtain the wages for the workmen employed under him; and on these occasions he was required to colour up, on a section drawn to a working scale suspended against the wall of the directors' room, the amount of excavation and embankment from time to time executed. But on many of these occasions, Mr. Dixon had no progress whatever to show for the money expended on the Chat Moss embankment. Sometimes, indeed, the visible work ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... supernatural world. On Hamlet's brooding there breaks no ray from Christian revelation. No hope of a hereafter soothes Lear as he bends over dead Cordelia. Macbeth, hesitating on the verge of crime, throws out of the scale any dread of future retribution,—assure him only ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam

... and costly ways of dandyism. He had five horses—he was moderate—de Marsay had fourteen! He returned the Vidame's hospitality, even including Blondet in the invitation, as well as de Marsay and Rastignac. The dinner cost five hundred francs, and the noble provincial was feted on the same scale. Victurnien played a good deal, and, for his misfortune, at ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac

... but energy at the last); and that all other forms of material substance is likewise so composed of vibrations of energy; then one is on the road to the discovery of the real state of affairs. Then he begins to realize that instead of the planes of being rising one above the other in the scale of their fineness, they are graded according to their degree of vibratory energy, and each may actually occupy the same space as all the others. In short, the "planes" are not strata or layers of ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita

... Sackett's Harbour with four thousand men. But Prevost said he could spare them only three thousand; whereupon they changed their objective to Oswego, which they took in excellent style, on May 6. The British suffered a serious reverse, though on a very much smaller scale, on May 30, at Sandy Creek, between Oswego and Sackett's Harbour, when a party of marines and bluejackets, sent to cut out some vessels with naval stores for Chauncey, was completely lost, every man being either ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood

... artificer is between the two, putting more thought, intelligence, and taste into his work than the artisan, but less of the idealizing, creative power than the artist. The sculptor, shaping his model in clay, is artificer, as well as artist; patient artisans, working simply by rule and scale, chisel and polish the stone. The man who constructs anything by mere routine and rule is a mechanic. The man whose work involves thought, skill, and constructive power is an artificer. The hod-carrier is a laborer; the bricklayer is a mechanic; ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... more and more!—November 20. This evening I took tea at a sister's house, where I found Franke's life. I have frequently, for a long time, thought of labouring in a similar way, though it might be on a much smaller scale; not, to imitate Franke, but in reliance upon the Lord. May God make it plain! November 21. Today I have had it very much impressed on my heart, no longer merely to think about the establishment of an Orphan-House, but ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, First Part • George Mueller

... not very long before it became known that Harold had no intention of marching away and leaving the Welsh unpunished, and that in the spring a campaign on a great scale was to be undertaken against them. The thanes of all the western counties were ordered to hold themselves in readiness to join with their levies in the spring. The Somerset and Devon men were to gather at Bristol, ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty

... statue of him by a modern Veronese sculptor, not unworthy of the subject or place, standing in the quiet Piazza dei Signori amid the deserted homes of the Della Scale, looking toward the palace of Can Grande, whose generous hospitality could not sweeten the bread of charity nor ease the steps of a patron's court to the proud exile. Dante could not have been easy to live with upon any terms. "Eh, puir fellow! he looks like ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... knows there is no short cut to social regeneration, and he will not recommend one, not even extirpation. He points out that the working women of Germany have never asked to be on an equality with men. The lower you descend in the social scale the less sharply women are differentiated from men, and the worse time women have in consequence. The wife of a peasant is only his equal in one respect: she works as hard as he does. Otherwise she is ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... only a passing glimpse, however, that our friends obtained. Their leader knew that the fortunes of the day were still in doubt, and that every man must throw his weight into the scale if victory was ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths

... smaller scale, the horrors of the siege of Magdeburgh were here repeated, the Tilly of the campaign ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... human being to manifest for another. He had remembered just in time that he must not so greatly demean himself as to cross swords with a person of no birth, and an actor besides; all his pride revolted at the bare idea of such a thing. An insult coming from a creature so low in the social scale could not reach him. Does a gentleman declare war upon the mud that bespatters him? However, it was not in his character to leave an offence unpunished, no matter whence it proceeded, and stepping nearer to de Sigognac he said, "You impertinent scoundrel, I will have every ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... most fanciful dividing line between Somerset and Devon, yet I imagine the two counties different in their attributes, as well as in their graces. Surely in Somerset the Downs are on a grander scale. Between two of them you are in a valley, and think that you see mountains. In Devonshire you have wider horizons, save for the lanes and hedges, which do their best to keep straying eyes fastened ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... thorny stem, which even man cannot scale without a contrivance; notwithstanding the apparently inaccessible clusters—inaccessible from their great height—there is a species of monkey that manages now and then to get a meal of them. How do these monkeys manage it? Not by climbing the stem, for the thorns are too ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... open air on a large scale, at which the animals are roasted and dressed whole, formerly common in the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... precipitous. Flaming Gorge, with walls 1300 feet, is particularly distinguished by being the beginning of the long series of close canyons. The river enters suddenly from Green River Valley, repeating on a smaller scale the conditions at the entrance to Lodore. From here on up to the Wind River Range the stream is flanked by occasional cliffs and buttes, but the country is comparatively open, and the many tributaries often have fine grassy bottoms. This ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... nothing now-a-days, to people of their property. I believe he loves the dear girl; and if he did not, my reputed millions would prevent his grandfather and his mother from allowing him to lose sight of her. If we were to build a castle on the top of Mount Himalaya, they would scale it, you may depend. I see no other remedy than to tell Gerald that Eulalia ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child

... for the extraordinary number of abandoned villages, towns, fortresses, and whole ruined suburbs of towns all over Persia, a sight which I think cannot be seen on such a large scale in any ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... o'clock the captain of the guard announced supper in the chamber between the Hall of the King's Guards and the antechamber called "Bull's Eye." This meal was always on a pretentious scale, and was attended at table by the royal children and numerous courtiers and ladies. When the last course had been served the King retired to his bedchamber and there for a few moments received all his Court, before passing into his Cabinet, where he spent something less ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne



Words linked to "Scale" :   Binet-Simon Scale, Mercalli scale, slow time scale, C major scale, measuring system, dander, gain, scale value, logarithmic scale, international scale, Reaumur scale, natural covering, foliage, fleck, scale leaf, tone, minor scale, climb, major diatonic scale, pentatonic scale, time-scale factor, take, vernier, model, plate, leafage, moment magnitude scale, scrap, note, fish scale, leaf, hit, small-scale, paraffin scale, music, scale up, time scale, fast time scale, quantitative relation, index, balance, remove, armor plate, shell plating, flake, graduated table, scale down, beam scale, Beaufort scale, magnitude relation, climb up, scale of C major, standard, attain, reach, plate armor, shell, armor plating, gapped scale, plate armour, vernier scale, armored scale, Richter scale, scale of measurement, dandruff, surmount, wage scale, musical scale, scaling, armour plate, musical notation, scaley, go up, chip, musical note, quantify, Rankine scale, gamut, pattern, brown soft scale, wage schedule, scale insect, scale wax, economy of scale, spring scale, pH scale, Fahrenheit scale, scalage, exfoliation, lever scale, sliding scale, scaly, proportion



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com