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Squareness   Listen
noun
Squareness  n.  The quality of being square; as, an instrument to try the squareness of work.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Squareness" Quotes from Famous Books



... horizontal sweep of his black hair. I recognised his decisive nose, more remarkable for character than beauty; his full nostrils, denoting, I thought, choler; his grim mouth, chin, and jaw—yes, all three were very grim, and no mistake. His shape, now divested of cloak, I perceived harmonised in squareness with his physiognomy: I suppose it was a good figure in the athletic sense of the term—broad chested and thin flanked, ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... perhaps it may be the daughter who is the magnet that draws the very timber across the parish? She is not ill-looking, and might pass muster in her best dress were it not for a squareness of build, like the set of a man rather than the full curves associated with woman. She is rarely seen in the house at all, and neither talks to the men nor the women who enter. She sallies forth at night, and her friends are the scampish among the sons ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... succeeded in making the stolid, uncompromising squareness of mission furniture take on a certain lightness and charm by painting it black and discreetly lining it with yellow and red. Yellow velour is used for the seat pads and heavy hangings, thin yellow silk curtains ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood

... grew very dignified. "We'll do this thing in a business-like way," he declared. "You don't know much about me, and a really square chap never gets haughty when he's asked to give some proof of his squareness. Just ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott

... the quality or relation apart from the concrete things so qualified and related. We are forced by language to use substantives which in their nature have only the sense of adjectives. He does not suppose that a body is not really square or round; but he thinks it a fiction to speak of squareness or roundness or space in general as something existing apart from matter and, in some ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... the lower jaw and the size and squareness of the angle where it bends upward to be hinged to the skull, below the ear, are what give the appearance of squareness and determination to the faces of strong, vigorous men or women. If we want to imply that a person has a feeble will, or ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson

... two years younger, looked as if nature had designed her for a boy, and the change into a girl was not yet decided. She, too, was very like Maria; but Maria's open nostrils were in her a droll retrousse, puggish little nose; her chin had a boyish squareness and decision, her round cheeks had two comical dimples, her eyes were either stretched in defiance or narrowed up with fun, and a slight cast in one gave a peculiar archness and character to her face; her skin, face, hands, and all, were uniformly pinky; her hair in such obstinate yellow ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... which, with a fair breeze, under all sail, was approaching the island. She was sorry to disappoint Edda, and for sometime she did not tell her of her mistake. She herself went several times to the glass, and was convinced, from the squareness of the vessel's yards and the whiteness of her canvas, that she was a man-of-war. Painful feelings crowded to her heart, for the vessel approaching reminded her strongly of the "Saint Cecilia:" she stood on boldly, as if ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston

... honour of having a separate command, being ourselves very well contented to continue on board the Espoir. For two days more we stood south, when, at daybreak, another sail was descried from the mast-head. She was a schooner, and from the squareness of her yards, her taut masts, and her white canvas, we suspected that, should she be an enemy, she would prove a very different sort of customer to the slow-sailing brig we had just before captured. That she was not afraid of us was very evident, for, throwing her head sails ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston

... skippers were forward amongst us, and they were of opinion that the chase was a man—of—war, although our own people seemed to doubt this. One of the skippers insisted that she was the Hornet, from the unusual shortness of her lower masts, and the immense squareness of her yards. But the puzzle was, if it were the Hornet, why she did not shorten sail. Still this might be accounted for, by her either wishing to make out what we were before she engaged us, or she might be clearing for action. At this ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... be to exclaim, "How unlucky that was there at all! Why, at least, could not Turner have kept it out of sight?" He has quite gratuitously brought it into sight; gratuitously drawn firmly the three lines of stiff drip-stone which mark its squareness and blankness. It is precisely that blank vacancy of decoration, and setting of the meager angles against wind and war, which he wants to force on your notice, that he may take you thoroughly out of Italy and Greece, and put you wholly into a barbarous ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin

... Wiley is in this affair simply on a business deal as he told you to-day, although I doubt the squareness as far as he is concerned. But I'm out for higher stakes—" She paused, clinching her hands. "Never mind about that. I'm going to 'phone Mr. North, and see if we can ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant

... of an unromantic squareness, it seemed the center of a vast empire during the week which was now ending and they were sorry at the thought of leaving it. But at least the Alligator Patrol was started and, like the island itself, nothing ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... picture and contrast with the curves. Not wanting it in the landscape, he has boldly made the contour of the seated female conform to a rigid straight line, accentuated still further by the flute in her hand. If it were not for this and other straight lines in the picture, and a certain squareness of drawing in the draperies, the richness of the trees in the background, the full forms of the flesh and drapery would be too much, and the effect become sickly, if not positively sweet. Van Dyck, also, ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed

... lines of edifices, their windows glittering in the yellow sunrise, and the narrow street between, with its barren pavement tracked and battered by wheels that have now rattled into an irrevocable past! The signs, with their unintelligible hieroglyphics! The squareness and ugliness, and regular or irregular deformity of everything that meets the eye! The marks of wear and tear, and unrenewed decay, which distinguish the works of man from the growth of nature! What is there in all this, capable of the slightest significance to minds that know nothing of ...
— The New Adam and Eve (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... of course?" assented Mr. DIBBLE, with what might have passed for an attempt at archness if he had not been so wholly devoted to squareness. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various

... hard-headed man could be possessed of such a weakness as vanity, he was certainly vain of his hardness. He was vain of that inflexible squareness of intellect, which made him the disagreeable creature that he was. He was vain of that unwavering obstinacy which no influence of love or pity had ever been known to bend from its remorseless purpose. He was vain of the ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon

... set of rails make sure the frame of the chair is square. The best way to test for squareness is to measure the diagonals with a stick. Spring the frame until they measure alike, using a brace to hold the frame in position until ...
— Mission Furniture - How to Make It, Part I • H. H. Windsor

... the uncompromising squareness of the new tower a subtle compliment to the Greek lexicon of Liddell, who then was Dean. But in spite of the wits, who resented any innovation in so famous a group of buildings, Bodley's tower is a fine one, and really enhances the effect ...
— The Charm of Oxford • J. Wells

... contrast to the Lupot bows in Plate VII., I give two examples of Dominique Peccatte, Plate VIII. Here we have forcibleness and energy to a most marked extent, yet there is a certain grace withal, the extreme squareness of the outer line does not offend the eye as in ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George

... gentlemen, I warn you that he will choose it for himself. If you don't believe me, I will ask you carefully to examine the breadth and squareness of his chin. In proposing Jerry Benham's health, a superfluous proceeding at the best, I don't think I can pay him a higher tribute than in saying that in addition to being both a scholar and a gentleman, he is also the best heavyweight boxer I have ever seen, in the ring or out of it, and that ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs

... stood the mansions of those men for whom, according to Scraggy Peterson's belief, the world had been made. Finally her gaze dropped to the scow, where little rivers of water made crooked paths across the deck. Piles of planks reared high at her back, and edged the scow with the squareness of a room. Scraggy knew that hauling lumber was but the cover for a darker trade. Yet as she glanced at the stolid, indifferent man trudging behind the mules a lovelight ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White

... salutation, with all its maturity, its gravity, was somehow essentially young. She was rather tall, and her figure had the same serious maturity in youth. She carried her small head high, and held her shoulders well back, so that she got a sort of squareness into the divine slope of them (people hadn't begun to slouch forward from the hips in those days), a squareness that agreed somehow with the character of her small face. I didn't know then whether it was a pretty face or not. I daresay it was a bit too odd and square for prettiness, ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair

... various degrees of weight. Such also is the word attribute itself, the common name of all particular attributes. But when only one attribute, neither variable in degree nor in kind, is designated by the name; as visibleness; tangibleness; equality; squareness; milk-whiteness; then the name can hardly be considered general; for though it denotes an attribute of many different objects, the attribute itself is always conceived as one, not many.(9) To avoid needless logomachies, the best course would probably ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... burning, as though it had become a permanent colour. Mr. Corbeck had a big head, massive and full; with shaggy, dark red-brown hair, but bald on the temples. His forehead was a fine one, high and broad; with, to use the terms of physiognomy, the frontal sinus boldly marked. The squareness of it showed "ratiocination"; and the fulness under the eyes "language". He had the short, broad nose that marks energy; the square chin—marked despite a thick, unkempt beard—and massive ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker

... upon the eye must have been due more to the great mass and extent of the building than to any symmetry of plan. Probably we must conceive of them as great complex blocks of solid building, rising in terrace above terrace, the flat roofs giving an appearance of squareness and solidity to the whole. On a closer approach the eye would be impressed by the wide and spacious courts, the stately porticoes, the noble stairways, and the wealth of colour everywhere displayed; but, on the whole, so far as can be judged, it was only from within ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie

... speaking, one of the crew sung out, "a sail on the weather-bow!" Sure enough, as we rose on the summit of a sea, a ship could be seen with all her topsails set running before the wind. Peter remarked that she was standing directly for us. "She is a large ship, by the squareness of her yards; probably either from the West Indies or South America, or maybe China, or from some port in the Pacific, and she has ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston

... be observed in regard to the general form of the Roman capital is its characteristic squareness. Although the letter as used to-day varies somewhat in proportions from its classic prototype, its skeleton is ...
— Letters and Lettering - A Treatise With 200 Examples • Frank Chouteau Brown

... be used to attach the sides of a drawer to the back and front in the first place, and nails be added when the glue has set. As an aid to obtaining perfect squareness, without which the drawers will fit badly, it is advisable to mark out on a board a rectangle having the exact inside dimensions of a drawer, and to nail strips of wood up to the lines on the inside. If the parts are put together round this template ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams

... I've always heard that you're an awfully square man," she said. "Daddy seemed to think that you could be depended on in any kind of a pinch. I hope it's true. I'm banking a lot on your squareness to-day." ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower

... manner. He got up now, and Philip saw that he was a man of middle height, thin, with white hair cut very short and a long mouth closed so tightly that he seemed to have no lips at all; he was clean-shaven but for small white whiskers, and they increased the squareness of face which his firm jaw gave him. He wore a brown tweed suit and a white stock. His clothes hung loosely about him as though they had been made for a much larger man. He looked like a respectable farmer of the middle of the nineteenth century. He ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

... listlessly by her side. Her face turned towards the outer darkness, through which her dreamy eyes seemed to see some entrancing picture, wore a look of impatient expectancy. She was tall for a half- caste, with the correct profile of the father, modified and strengthened by the squareness of the lower part of the face inherited from her maternal ancestors—the Sulu pirates. Her firm mouth, with the lips slightly parted and disclosing a gleam of white teeth, put a vague suggestion of ferocity into the impatient expression of her features. And yet her dark and ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad

... made with a modern axe, is shown. This specimen has a squareness of outline and an evenness of surface not observed in the ancient examples. The ladder from Mashongnavi, illustrated on the left of Fig. 46, closely resembles the Oraibi specimen, though the workmanship is somewhat ruder. ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff

... and the more Miss Bremer studied, during their long conversation, the more significant and agreeable she found it. They who had painted the great Minister's portrait had not understood this countenance nor the character of the head. There was in it a certain squareness, but at the same time refinement. The complexion was fresh and delicate, the forehead magnificent, open, with ample space for both broad and elevated ideas; clear, lively, and penetrating was the glance of the light blue eye; the nose and mouth, as well as the shape ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams

... She said that college was the finest place in the world for a girl to get acquainted with herself—that cowardice and weakness of purpose and meanness and pettiness stood out so clearly against the background of fineness and squareness; and that four years was long enough to see all sorts of faults in oneself, and change them according to one's new theories. As she said it, it didn't sound ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton

... through the Civil War so quietly that the fact was unknown to some of his most intimate friends. He was mustered out with honor and entered the business world in Indianapolis. His labors here put him at the forefront for sagacity, squareness, honorable ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster

... tangled silk. She was very brown then and very bony, and so ridiculously soft of heart that her tenderness was regarded by her schoolmates as an unfortunate infirmity. She was tall still, taller than himself, with large limbs and a sort of manly squareness of the shoulders and erectness of the figure, but neatly gowned, with little feminine touches of flower and ribbon that belied the savour of unwomanliness in her size and her bearing. Her complexion was clear and fair, her abundant ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson

... her forehead and bound in a heavy braid on the back of her neck. But it was her face that attracted one, a pale sad face that was stamped on every feature with the impress of a determined will and of an intense womanliness. From the pronounced jaw that melted its squareness of profile in the oval of the full face to the dark brown eyes that rarely veiled themselves beneath their long-lashed lids, everything told that the girl possessed the indefinable something we call character. And if there was in the ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller

... the outlaw, almost within reach of his hand. With his back to a tree Carvel was smoking luxuriously. He had thrown off his cap and his coat, and in the warm fireglow he looked almost boyishly young. But even in that glow his jaws lost none of their squareness, nor ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood

... painted Percival, a little idealistic about the eyes, wholly firm about the mouth, appeared the more determined of the two. Perhaps this came from the shoulder-straps, the blue uniform, and the military squareness of the shoulders. ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter

... uphill. No one place, however, was far from another within the toy-town, and they came presently to an open piazza, on the upper side of which rose the great church. It had a square front, masking with its squareness the triangular gable of the building. Upon this screen, in the brightest of colours, magenta and sky-blue predominating, was represented the day of judgment—the mother seated on the right hand of the judge, and casting a pitiful look upon ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald

... curious, smooth, milky whiteness, lacking the gray, harder look of that of the native men, and with just a touch of the iridescent quality possessed by the women. His features were cast in a delicate mold, pretty enough almost to be called girlish, yet with a firm squareness of chin ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings

... that his broad honest face expressed more good humour than intellect, and his manners wanted polish. He was tolerably well-featured, with light eyes and dark hair, and though half a year older than his cousin, was much shorter, more perhaps in appearance than reality, from the breadth and squareness of his shoulders, and ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge

... surrounding neighbourhood with four boldly built towers; had then also a spire at the crossing; and must have been at that time like a more magnificent version of the buildings which still crown the hill of Laon. Externally, the proportions, the squareness, of the nave (west and east, the vast narthex or porch, and the [131] Gothic choir, rise above its roof-line), remind one of another great Romanesque church at home—of the nave of Winchester, out of which Wykeham carved his richly ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... the kind and take the book from him and show him how to read. His eyes, soft and brown, were the eyes of a child. She noticed that the lower portion of his flat white cheeks looked broader than the upper without giving an effect of squareness of jaw. Then the rhythm took her again and with the second "sur l'eau, si beau," she saw a very blue lake and a little boat with lateen sails, and during the third verse began to forget the lifeless voice. As the murmured refrain came from the girls there was a slight movement in Fraulein's ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson

... it is new, and before the skin has had time to thicken, makes people susceptible inversely to their opportunities for shielding themselves. In Owen was found, in place of his father's impressibility, a larger share of his father's pride, and a squareness of idea which, if coupled with a little more blindness, would have amounted to positive prejudice. To him humanity, so far as he had thought of it at all, was rather divided into distinct classes than blended from extreme to extreme. Hence by ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... certain extent, this is so. The beast must be a system of mathematical lines. To the advocate of symmetry, the setting-on of a tail will be a condemning fault; indeed the ridge of the back, like a straight line, with the outline of the belly exactly parallel, viewed from the side, and a depth and squareness when viewed from behind,—which remind us of a geometrical cube, rather than a vital economy,—may be said to be the indications of excellence in a fat ox. The points of excellence in such an animal are outlined under the subsequent head, ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings

... severity—of a sternness apparently checked by rare self-control from breaking into a denunciation of the modern Dives. Then all was changed. His face softened and lighted; the broad shoulders seemed to relax from their uncompromising squareness; he stood more easily upon his feet; he glowed with ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... though it would be premature to say that the Sabaean alphabet is derived from the Phoenician. It is as likely, considering the date of both, that they are equally descendants from an older source. The characteristics of the Sabaean are great squareness aud boldness in outline. It has twenty-nine symbols, whereby it is enabled to differentiate certain sounds which are not distinguished from one another in the writing of the northern Semites. As we have seen, it is a tendency in northern Semitic to open the heads of letters, and therefore ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... contradiction in terms). The size of these angles or points, of course, varies very much in the different kinds of textile with which pattern is incorporated, from the fine silk fabric, in which they are almost inappreciable, to carpets of all kinds, where they are emphatic; so that a certain squareness of mass becomes a desirable and characteristic feature in designs for these purposes, and, indeed, I think it should be more or less acknowledged in all textile design, in order to preserve ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane

... "About her squareness? Well, there was the time Gentle Willie Purdy got drunk. We call him Gentle Willie because he isn't, you know. About three o'clock in the morning, he took the notion it was dinner time and climbed the side gate to the Hotel Marseillaise ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin

... tall, well-knit young fellow, with a dark, plain face, a hawk nose, and grey eyes. He was clean-shaven; no moustache or beard concealed the masterful squareness of his jaw or the rather satirical curve of ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... and a cry of amazement. The blind was down, and a strong light was burning in the room. The shadow of a man who was seated in a chair within was thrown in hard, black outline upon the luminous screen of the window. There was no mistaking the poise of the head, the squareness of the shoulders, the sharpness of the features. The face was turned half-round, and the effect was that of one of those black silhouettes which our grandparents loved to frame. It was a perfect reproduction of Holmes. So amazed was I that I threw out my hand to make sure that the man himself ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle

... face showed clean cut almost to feminine refinement under the wide hat, and the blue shirt which clung about him displayed his slender symmetry. It was, however, not made of flannel, but apparently of silk, and the embroidered deerskin jacket which showed the squareness of his shoulders, was not only daintily wrought, but had evidently cost a good many dollars. His loose trousers and silver spurs were made in Mexican fashion: but the boldness of the dark eyes, and the pride that ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss

... instance, mind, any deviation from this base of operations, as I may safely say, will land you in no end of difficulties, as everything must be "square with the fiddle," as we have a habit of saying, though the whole is a matter of curves and lines, there being nothing of squareness about it. Having drawn this decided line, I take my half outline, plate 1, and place it exactly where, by tracing close to the side of it, touching every turn so that there can be no mistake hereafter, nor ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson

... The Sheldonian Theatre was thronged before he appeared on the platform, a striking presence in his D.C.L. robes, and looking very leonine with his silvery gray hair sweeping back in one long wave from his forehead, and the rugged squareness of his features tempered by the benignity of an old age which has seen much and overcome much. He read the lecture from a printed copy, not venturing, as he would have liked, upon the severe task of speaking it from memory, considering its length and the importance of preserving ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley

... his persistency and by the coolness of his manner, as, leaning on his stick, he stood looking down at her. He looked down in a way that obliged her to look up. She had not realized till now how big and tall he was. She noticed, too, the squareness of his jaw, the force of his chin, and the compression of his straight, thin lips beneath the long curve of his mustache. In spite of his air of granite imperturbability, she saw that his fair skin was subject to little flushes of embarrassment or shyness, like a girl's. ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King

... the art of Book-binding is not deteriorating: and I am not sure whether JOHN CLARKE, of Frith Street, Soho, be not as "mighty a man" in his way as any of his predecessors. There is a solidity, strength, and squareness of workmanship about his books, which seem to convince you that they may be tossed from the summit of Snowdon to that of Cader Idris without detriment or serious injury. His gilding is first rate; both for choice of ornament and splendour of gold. Nor is his coadjutor, WILLIAM BEDFORD, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... kitten; torment a boy smaller than himself; snatch an apple from the stall of the old woman at the corner and, with a justice whose speed was incredible, Hal Harding descended upon the miscreant and pommeled into him a lesson in squareness that he ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett

... habits of life, and which it is extremely probable would have been modified through sexual selection. We have seen that with the lowest savages the people of each tribe admire their own characteristic qualities,—the shape of the head and face, the squareness of the cheek- bones, the prominence or depression of the nose, the colour of the skin, the length of the hair on the head, the absence of hair on the face and body, or the presence of a great beard, and so forth. Hence these and other such points could hardly ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... the time did not show much change or become more varied or comfortable. It was large and solid and the chairs had the satisfactory effect of good proportion, while the general squareness of outline added to the feeling of solidity. Oak was used, and later walnut. The chair legs were straight, and often elaborately turned, and usually had strainers or under framing. Cushions were simply tied on at first, but the knowledge of upholstering was gaining ground, and by the ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop

... philosophy of bricks and mortar to the philosophy of turnips. To call a man a turnip may be playful, but is seldom respectful. But when we wish to pay emphatic honour to a man, to praise the firmness of his nature, the squareness of his conduct, the strong humility with which he is interlocked with his equals in silent mutual support, then we invoke the nobler Cockney metaphor, and call ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton

... the square neck that gave her exquisite throat full play. The sleeves came to the elbow, and both hands and arms were beautiful. Her skin was many shades fairer, her cheeks like the heart of a rose, and her mouth dimpled in the corners. Her lithe figure had none of the squareness of the ordinary habitan, and every movement ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... sense of all that he had escaped in not having had to live with her rolled over him like a wave, while he looked strangely at Mr. Roy, to whom this privilege had been vouchsafed. He saw in a moment his successor had a constitution that would carry it. Mr. Roy suggested squareness and solidity; he was a broadbased, comfortable, polished man, with a surface in which the rank tendrils of irritation would not easily obtain a foothold. He had a broad, blank face, a capacious mouth, and ...
— Georgina's Reasons • Henry James

... ornamented with busts of winged angels called angel-brackets, and angel-corbels. The portcullis and the Tudor rose—both badges of the house of Tudor—also figure prominently among the ornaments of the period. The crockets for the most part partake of the squareness which pervades all the foliage of ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath

... carries out the mild glow of the wall. The wide, fair windows open as if they had expanded to let in the rosy dawn of the Renaissance. Charming, for that matter, are the windows of all the chateaux of Touraine, with their squareness corrected (as it is not in the Tudor architecture) by the curve of the upper corners, which gives this line the look, above the expressive aperture, of a pencilled eyebrow. The low door of this front is crowned by a high, deep niche, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... that the streets have crowded so disrespectfully about it the whole place still has a sort of "world-with-out-end-amen" air—perhaps because of the impressive squareness of its structure, great blocks of brownstone joined solidly; perhaps because of the enormous gnarled wistaria vines that stretch above its massive cornices—but one does feel as Felicia Day herself did when some one asked her how long she thought it had been there. She said she thought ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke

... a seemingly exhaustless vitality, and a certain "squareness" of character as well as of mind, gave Cressida Garnet earning powers that were exceptional even in her lavishly rewarded profession. Managers chose her over the heads of singers much more gifted, because she was so sane, so conscientious, and above all, because she was so sure. Her efficiency ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather

... keenest of wit. The farmer who obliges them is invariably repaid with lucrative 'tips;' but if he betrays those 'tips' may possibly find his information in turn untrustworthy, and have to sell by auction, and depart to Texas. Luckett avoids such pitfalls by the simple policy of 'squareness,' which is, perhaps, the wisest of all. When the 'skit' blew past he took his gun from the corner and stepped over the hatch, and came down the path with me, grumbling that all the grain, even where the crop looked well, had ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies

... a great deal in the lesson there enunciated which demanded consideration. Hitherto the Major had fought his battles with a certain adherence to squareness. If his angles had not all been perfect angles, still there had always been an attempt at geometrical accuracy. He might now and again have told a lie about a horse—but who that deals in horses ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... difference we have to have a name, and we use the words "vital," "vitality," which seem to me to stand for as undeniable realities as the words heat, light, chemical affinity, gravitation. There is not a principle of roundness, though "nature centres into balls," nor of squareness, though crystallization is in right lines, nor of aquosity, though two thirds of the surface of the earth is covered with water. Can we on any better philosophical grounds say that there is a principle of vitality, though the earth swarms with living beings? Yet the word ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs

... her a thick-built woman, after the gladiatorial fashion ... as she moved she made me think of a battleship going into action. There was something about her face ... a squareness of jaw, a belligerency, that reminded me of Roosevelt, whom I had seen twice ... once, at Mt. Hebron, when he had made a speech from the chapel platform ... (when I had determined not to join in the general applause of one whom I considered ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... straight line below them. His face, high-colored and square in outline, revealed, by the lines of its wrinkles and by the general character of its expression, the ingenuous craftiness of a peasant. The strength of his body, the stoutness of his limbs, the squareness of his shoulders, the width of his feet,—all denoted the villager transplanted to Paris. His powerful hairy hands, with their large square nails, would alone have attested his origin if other vestiges had not remained in various parts of his person. His lips wore the cordial smile which ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac

... their very eyes. The ghastly pallor remained on his face. His shoulders lost something of their squareness. A muscle was twitching about his mouth. His eyes were dulled as he tried once more to meet the look of ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele

... man. Outwardly Ford was not much changed since Mason had come with him out of Alaska and lost sight of him afterwards. There was the maturity which the man of thirty possessed and which the virile young fellow of twenty-one had lacked. There was the same straight glance, the same atmosphere of squareness and mental poise. Those were qualities which Mason set down as valuable factors in his estimate of the man. Besides, there were other signs which did not make so pleasant ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower

... held upon the subject without coming to a conclusion, for, though everybody condemned the old name, nobody could invent a new one. At length, when the council was almost in despair, a burgher, remarkable for the size and squareness of his head, proposed that they should call it New Amsterdam. The proposition took everybody by surprise; it was so striking, so apposite, so ingenious. The name was adopted by acclamation, and New Amsterdam the metropolis was thenceforth called. Still, however, the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... plum-puddings; moreover, he keeps a single-horse chaise, and has built and endowed a Methodist chapel. Yet is he the richest man in these parts. Everything prospers with him. Money drifts about him like snow. He looks like a rich man. There is a sturdy squareness of face and figure; a good-humoured obstinacy; a civil importance. He never boasts of his wealth, or gives himself undue airs; but nobody can meet him at market or vestry without finding out immediately ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford

... In a grotesque squareness of outline, and impossibility of perspective, they are not unlike the woodcuts in old books; but they were oil-paintings, and the artist, like the painter of the Primrose family, had not been sparing of his colours. In one, a lady was having a toe amputated—an ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens



Words linked to "Squareness" :   square, oblongness, rectangularity



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