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Dial   /dˈaɪəl/  /daɪl/   Listen
Dial

verb
(past & past part. dialed or dialled; pres. part. dialing or dialling)
1.
Operate a dial to select a telephone number.
2.
Choose by means of a dial.



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"Dial" Quotes from Famous Books



... industry, and when he stood still, holding the guard-rail in front of the starting-gear, he would keep glancing to the right at the steam-gauge, at the water-gauge, fixed upon the white wall in the light of a swaying lamp. The mouths of two speaking-tubes gaped stupidly at his elbow, and the dial of the engine-room telegraph resembled a clock of large diameter, bearing on its face curt words instead of figures. The grouped letters stood out heavily black, around the pivot-head of the indicator, emphatically symbolic of loud exclamations: AHEAD, ASTERN, SLOW, Half, ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad

... and as he watched the slow-moving hands upon the moonlit dial in the church tower, it seemed to him they were held back by invisible fingers, and there came to his mind a forgotten story of a man who, having been accidentally imprisoned in a sepulchre, suffered in the twenty minutes ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... her hands, and endeavored to shut out the grotesque and phantom-like forms that seemed to dance before her. A deathlike stillness reigned through the house, the silence alone broken by the ticking of the great dial at the head of the staircase. There is something inexpressibly awful in the ticking of a clock, when heard at midnight by the lonely and anxious watcher beside the bed of death. It is the voice ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... to the door each time she heard the clock strike, but by degrees she learned that all the strokes had not the same value as far as regarded meals, and she frequently fixed her eyes, guided by her ears, on the dial ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... of about half an hour between the dial of Putney Church and my watch, which a young gentleman "intended for one of the universities" accounted for from difference of latitude. He likewise explained a phenomenon, which rather startled us, near Kew. We saw about half-a-dozen cows galloping ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various

... buildings I observed one of the most remarkable, largest, and most complete timepieces I had yet seen; and I had on this occasion an opportunity of examining it closely. The dial was oblong, enclosed in a case of clear transparent crystal, somewhat resembling in form the open portion of a mercurial barometer. At the top were three circles of different colours, divided by twelve equidistant ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... The dial of the Board of Trade, or the Pit as it is called, is the magnet which attracts all the eyes of Chicago, for on its face is marked the shifting, changing price of wheat. And there on the floor, below ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley

... most men. The chapter "On Editors" is very amusing, though perhaps not entirely in the way in which Hazlitt meant it; but I cannot think him happy "On Footmen," or on "The Conversation of Lords," for reasons already sufficiently stated. A sun-dial is a much more promising subject than a broomstick, yet many essays might be written on sun-dials without there being any fear of Hazlitt's being surpassed. Better still is "On Taste," which, if the twenty or thirty best papers in Hazlitt ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... gentlemen, the time of life is short; To spend that shortness basely were too long, If life did ride upon a dial's point, Still ending at the arrival of an hour." —SHAKESPEARE: ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... narrow circle of the seen and known, And always tending to a noble end, As all things must that overrule the soul, And for a space unseat the helmsman, Will. The fate of England and of freedom once Seemed wavering in the heart of one plain man: One step of his, and the great dial-hand, That marks the destined progress of the world In the eternal round from wisdom on 40 To higher wisdom, had been made to pause A hundred years. That step he did not take,— He knew not why, nor we, but only God,— And lived ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... thinking that she could not bear it if Pete were not there. How could she wait many minutes under the eyes of the guards, who must know better than any one else that no flesh-and-blood girl took any real interest in Egyptian antiquities? The round, unambitious dial at the entrance, like an enlarged kitchen-clock, had pointed to the exact hour set for the meeting. She ought not to expect that Pete, getting away from the office in business hours, could be as punctual as an eager, idle creature ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller

... very easy to preach. In the course of my sermon, I know not why, I was led to Speak about the endless misery of hell; and some who were present said I asserted, "That there was a great clock in hell, with a large dial, but no hands to mark the progress of time: it had a pendulum which swung sullenly and slowly from side to side, continually saying, 'Ever! never!' ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam

... up two stone steps to a round grass plot. There was a sun-dial in the middle, and all round against the yew hedge a low, wide marble seat. The red clew ran straight across the grass and by the sun-dial, and ended in a small brown hand with jewelled rings on every finger. The hand was, naturally, ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit

... distinguished one from the other; and it is only in the last romance of all, "Quatrevingt-treize," that this culmination is most perfect. This is in the nature of things. Men who are in any way typical of a stage of progress may be compared more justly to the hand upon the dial of the clock, which continues to advance as it indicates, than to the stationary milestone, which is only the measure of what is past. The movement is not arrested. That significant something by which the work of such a man differs from that of his predecessors goes on ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of 1870. Strouds, cotton, beads, and trading-guns are still the wants of the Indian, and are still traded for marten and musquash. In its day Cumberland has had distinguished visitors. Franklin; in 1819, wintered at the fort, and a sun-dial still stands in rear of the house, a gift from the great explorer. We buried Joe Miller in the pine-shadowed graveyard near the fort. Hard work it was with pick and crowbar to prise up the ice-locked earth and to get poor Joe that depth which the frozen clay ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... stone bench facing a sun-dial, and leaning hack, her hands clasped behind her head, looked ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... The murder was the only thing that was present with us. Whatever we talked of we seemed to hear of the murder in voice and word. The last consciousness at night and the first in the morning was that everything was unsettled, and that the joy of life was suddenly arrested, like the hands on a dial at a certain hour. ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... swaying of the pendulum. The other wheels and pinions of the movement are so arranged that they indicate the number of turns the wheel at the top of the pendulum completes, by means of hands traversing round a dial-plate inscribed with figures ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various

... small rug in the middle of the floor to expose a massive steel trap door. This he unlocked by twirling the dial of a complicated mechanism. Some years before Tom had constructed beneath his laboratory an impregnable chamber to safeguard his secret plans. He called it his Chest of Secrets, ...
— Tom Swift and His Giant Telescope • Victor Appleton

... the dial on his television. The station he had selected brightened and the face of the set turned from dark to blue. Ernie sipped his can of beer. He was alone in the room, and it ...
— All Day Wednesday • Richard Olin

... Creed, bird's-eye spotter and bad man of the worn-out little town of Hilarity, knocked the ashes from his pipe and held a glowing brand to the dial of his watch. ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... at the wheel, motionless except for an occasional scant shifting of his hands. He was sailing by compass; the patent log, trailing behind on its long cord, maintained a constant, jerking register on its dial. He had resolutely banished all thought save that of navigation. Halvard was occupied forward, clearing the deck of the accumulations of the anchorage. When he came aft Woolfolk said ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer

... buildings overgrown with ivy and venerable vines. On the left is a dwelling-house enriched with elaborate mouldings and cornices, and at the farther end of the court is the entrance to the cellars, surmounted by a sun-dial bearing the date 1829. The latter, however, is no criterion of the age of the buildings themselves, as these were occupied by the firm at its foundation, towards the close of the last century. We are first conducted into an antiquated-looking low cellier, the roof ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly

... is not naturally an indolent man, but the prominent fact about him is that he has nothing to do. If you gave him a sun-dial to take care of, or a rain-gauge to watch, or a secret to keep, he would be quite delighted. I once asked Smith to keep a secret of mine, and the poor old fellow was so much afraid of losing it that in a few hours he had got everybody in the station ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay

... languishing away, in dire and pining want. With the baby in her arms, she wandered here and there in quest of occupation; and with its thin face lying in her lap, and looking up in hers, did any work for any wretched sum: a day and night of labor for as many farthings as there were figures on the dial. If she had quarreled with it; if she had neglected it; if she had looked upon it with a moment's hate! if, in the frenzy of an instant, she had struck it! No! His comfort was, She loved ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various

... the Russian set a pointer upon a small dial at the side of the clockwork, then he replaced the cover upon the black box, and returned the entire machine to its hiding-place in ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Indian architecture in the island. It was a pile of stone-work, raised pyramidically, upon an oblong base, or square, two hundred and sixty-seven feet long, and eighty-seven wide. It was built like the small pyramidal mounts upon which we sometimes fix the pillar of a sun-dial, where each side is a flight of steps; the steps, however, at the sides, were broader than those at the ends, so that it terminated not in a square of the same figure with the base, but in a ridge, like the roof of a house: There were eleven ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr

... premeditated purpose seemed a sacrilege. I felt affronted for the huge weathercock, reclining sulkily against a fence, no more to point his beak to the east with obstinate preference. I mourned over the broad, old-fashioned dial, on which young eyes could discern the time a mile off. The old sexton lived to see this change, and at the end of half a century of care under that venerable roof he went to his rest. The beloved minister, and many, many who sat with ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various

... break it not. Take heed, Ulric; you have seen to what the passions led me: 310 Twenty long years of misery and famine Quenched them not—twenty thousand more, perchance, Hereafter (or even here in moments which Might date for years, did Anguish make the dial), May not obliterate or expiate The madness and dishonour of an instant. Ulric, be warned by a father!—I was not By mine, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... on the wall, one of them over the stairs. Rooms opened to right and left of the front door, and in the corner of the hall, to the right, stood a big clock. It ticked slowly and solemnly, and a little ship, above the dial, rocked back and forth on some painted waves. I caught ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson

... Grand Canyon is a moving picture. It changes every moment. Always shadows are disappearing here, appearing there; shortening here, lengthening there. With every passing hour it becomes a different thing. It is a sun-dial ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... fuel they had than they needed to get home. When they were moving away from station, she dropped in alarmed little jumps, but when they were headed home, she inched along in serene contentment, or if they were coasting, sneaked triumphantly back up the dial. ...
— Slingshot • Irving W. Lande

... filly, "Progress," thou wouldst ride, Have young companions ever at thy side; But wouldst thou stride the stanch old mare, "Success," Go with thine elders, though they please thee less. Shun such as lounge through afternoons and eves, And on thy dial write, "Beware of thieves!" Felon of minutes, never taught to feel The worth of treasures which thy fingers steal, Pick my left pocket of its silver dime, But spare the ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... watch. It tells me that it is nine o'clock, and it shows me, too, a dial of delicate color where the sky is reflected in rose-pink and blue, and the fine fret-work of bushes that are planted there above ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... seeming submission of the North was fallacious. The Danes had reintroduced into Britain a fresh mass of incoherent barbarism, which could not thus readily coalesce. The Scandinavian leaven in the population had put back the shadow on the dial of England some three centuries. AEthelstan, Eadward's son, found himself obliged to give his sister in marriage to Sihtric or Sigtrig, Danish king of the Yorkshire Northumbrians, which probably marks a recognition ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen

... curling from our bows. Behind me, in the darkened chart-room, the Filipino quartermaster gently swung the wheel from time to time in response to the direction of the needle on the illuminated compass-dial. So lifeless was the sea that our foremast barely swayed against the stars. The smoke from our funnel trailed across the purple canopy of the sky as though ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... his observations from the summit of the great temple of Bel, their own observatory, but he refused this offer decidedly, and persisted in his haughty reserve. When Oropastes attempted to explain to him the celebrated Babylonian sun-dial, introduced by Anaximander of Miletus into Greece, he turned from the Magian with a scornful laugh, saying: "We knew all this, before you knew the meaning ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... been the first dial that had been made in Egypt, and was a little before the time that Ahaz made his [first] dial in Judea, and about anno 755, in the first year of the seventh olympiad, as we shall see presently. See 2 Kings ...
— Against Apion • Flavius Josephus

... transmitter screen lit up with a blurred jumble of print, colors, a muttering of voices, music and noises. Gefty twisted a dial. The screen cleared, showed a newscast headline sheet. Gefty blinked at it, glanced sideways ...
— The Winds of Time • James H. Schmitz

... facilities that generates engine failures. - Inserting metal/material fatigue to failure attachments on key threat systems. - Identifying specific location and determining strength and material of protected targets of value. - Developing dial a setting ordnance capable of destroying all hardened targets. - Detecting and tracting (destroying at will) all targets of value including mobile targets. - Detecting and targeting key threat launch systems before launch. - Detecting plot and simultaneously destroying ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade

... of the house is an immoderate revolutionist, speaks English very well, and is a great admirer of our party writers. In his room I observed a vast quantity of English books, and on his chimney stood what he called a patriotic clock, the dial of which was placed between two pyramids, on which were inscribed the names of republican authors, and on the top of one was that of our countryman, Mr. Thomas Paine—whom, by the way, I understand you intended to exhibit in a much ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... how much better life would be in the future. For a minute I didn't get the connection; then I realized that the announcer's voice was rasping and tinny—hardly that of the regular newscaster. I looked at the dial. It was tuned to the Carron City wave length as usual. I was getting the morning news by courtesy ...
— Robots of the World! Arise! • Mari Wolf

... ticking in leisurely fashion in the corner behind him, solemn and sedate, as it had done since, (as the neat inscription upon the dial testified), it had first been made in the Year of Grace 1732, by one Jabez Havesham, of London;—this ancient time-piece now uttered a sudden wheeze, (which, considering its great age, could scarcely ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol

... shepherds mark The hour when, to the dial true, Cichorium to the towering lark, Lifts her soft eye, ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer

... should be resistance to him by force. Two men from the mountains had met in the lobby of the Capitol Hotel and a few moments later, under the drifting powder smoke, two men lay wounded and three lay dead. The quarrel was personal, it was said, but the dial-hand of the times was left pointing with sinister prophecy at tragedy yet to come. And in the dark of the first moon of that century the shadowy hillsmen were getting ready to swoop down. And it was the dawn of the twentieth century of the Christian ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.

... difference helps to make both notions distinct; and their intimate connection is shown in this, that five yards are traversed in a certain time, and that five minutes are measured by the motion of an index over some fraction of a yard upon the dial. ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... not a Boob expect to see angels in the shimmering blue of heaven? Is he more disreputable than the knave who frisks his watch meanwhile? And suppose he does see an angel, or even only a blue acre of sky—is that not worth as much as the dial in his poke? ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley

... himself two contiguous chambers behind which ran one and the same corridor. In each chamber, against the partition that separated it from the corridor, there was a small bracket, and upon the latter, and very near the wall, there was a wooden dial supported on a standard, but in no wise permanently fixed upon the bracket. Each dial carried a needle, and each circumference was inscribed with twenty-five letters of the alphabet. The experiment that was performed with these dials consisted in placing ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various

... located. In the presence of a meter, the installation can conveniently be tested for soundness by throwing into it, through the meter, a pressure of 12 inches or so of water from the weighted holder, then leaving the inlet cock open, and observing whether the index hand on the lowest dial remains perfectly stationary for a quarter of an hour—movement of the linger again indicating a leak. The search for leaks must never be made with a light; if the pipes are full of air this is useless, if full of gas, criminal in its stupidity. While the whole installation is ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield

... table he fastened an arrangement with two upright posts supporting a dial which he called a "dynamometer." The uprights were braced in the back, and the whole thing reminded me ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve

... at night, was so frightened that he let the beer fall, upon seeing on the stairs, as he was looking up, a bright shining figure of a woman, by which he saw through a window into the charity-school, and saw the dial in the school. The figure passed by him, and beckoned him to follow; but he was too much terrified to obey its directions: he ran home, and was very sick. Soon after, Mr. Parsons himself, having occasion to go into another ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor

... Captain assured us that it was the best time-keeper in the world. It only requires winding once a month; used to show the day of the month, but some meddler disarranged that part of the machinery. The dial plate is of some white metal, brilliant and silvery. Captain Knox said it was brass, but I have seen things look more brazen that were not ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall

... the Spectator, the Westminster, the Daily News, and the Morning Star, were the principal British pro-Northern organs. In addition The Liberator names among the lesser and provincial press the following: Nonconformist, British Standard, Dial, Birmingham Post, Manchester Examiner, Newcastle Chronicle, Caledonian Mercury and Belfast Whig. ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... at the communication board. The meteor warning dial was fluctuating violently, showing the presence of a rapidly approaching body—a meteor, or perhaps a flight of them. Gongs throughout the liner automatically began to sound a warning for the passengers to get into their space suits. The captain ...
— Loot of the Void • Edwin K. Sloat

... finding herself unable to keep pace with the quick step of French recklessness and irreligion, bethought herself of finding refuge in Gallic politics. "Our people," says Bronsveld, "then became a second-hand on the great dial of the French nation." Old men are now living who have not forgotten those days when all distinctions vanished, when the only name heard was "burgher," and when the skeptical and daring favorites ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... weight, and partly for a reason I shall now explain, I seldom carry it. The reason is this: Every evening when I have it with me I feel an unaccountable desire to open and consult it, even if I can think of no reason for wishing to know the time. But if I yield to it, the moment my eyes rest upon the dial I am filled with a mysterious apprehension—a sense of imminent calamity. And this is the more insupportable the nearer it is to eleven o'clock—by this watch, no matter what the actual hour may be. After the hands have registered eleven the desire to look ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce

... of man's time-measured race Have vanished from the earth, Nor left a memory of their trace, Since first this scene had birth; These waters, thundering now along, Joined in Creation's matin-song; And only by their dial-trees Have known the ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... falling on the pile, produces an electric current; the current, passing through the coil, deflects the needles, and the magnitude of the deflection may be made a measure of the heat. The upper needle moves over a graduated dial far too small to be directly seen. It is now, however, strongly illuminated; and above it is a lens which, if permitted, would form an image of the needle and dial upon the ceiling. There, however, ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall

... think, the dial points at five: Anon, I'm sure, the Duke himself in person Comes this way to the melancholy vale, 120 The place of death and sorry execution, Behind the ditches of ...
— The Comedy of Errors - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... plain white dimity. But I love the deep window seats where I can curl up among cushions, with a cataract of roses veiling the picture of the terrace with its ivy-covered stone balustrade, the sun-dial, the two white peacocks, and far away, the park with a blue mist among the trees. And I haven't learned yet to love my beautiful room at Mrs. Ess Kay's, though I admire it immensely—admire to the ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... is the last. (Reads Directions.) Oh, you've got to set the finger on the dial to the question you want answered, and then put your penny in. What ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 20, 1891 • Various

... pigeon is builded well. In summer and winter that bird is there, Out and in with the morning air. I love to see him track the street, With his wary eye and active feet; And I often watch him as he springs, Circling the steeples with easy wings, Till across the dial his shade has pass'd, And the belfry edge is gained at last. 'Tis a bird I love, with its brooding note, And the trembling throb in its mottled throat; There's a human look in its swelling breast, And ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth

... probably buried in the chancel at Powderham, where is an effigy of a bishop inlaid in brass. He built the north tower of Exeter cathedral, and placed in it a great bell, called after him Peter's bell, with a clock and dial: he built also the tower and good part of the church at Honiton (which before was only a chapel, now the chancel). In the windows of the tower are the arms of his parents, now lost; but his paternal arms are on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 554, Saturday, June 30, 1832 • Various

... shirt-front which served as a kind of marble pedestal for his sculptured head. There was, moreover, in his every move and look, that quality of transparent sincerity which always won him friends at sight. "If men's faces are clocks," Peter always said, "Holker's is fitted with a glass dial. You can not only see what time it is, but you can see the ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith

... turned up his oxygen intake, at the same time glancing at the clock dial in his helmet. He smiled. Nineteen days and seven hours. He had calculated it almost precisely. He wasn't more than an hour off, which was ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett

... poor service; 89% of telephone network is automatic; trunk network is microwave radio relay; roughly 3,300 villages with no service (February 1990 est.) international: satellite earth station - 1 Intelsat; new digital international direct-dial exchanges ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... apply thus the length of the annual motion of the sun to duration, supposed before the sun's or any other motion had its being, which is no more difficult or absurd, than to apply the notion I have of the moving of a shadow one hour to-day upon the sun-dial to the duration of something last night, v. g. the burning of a candle, which is now absolutely separate from all actual motion; and it is as impossible for the duration of that flame for an hour last night to co-exist ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke

... little instrument that looked like a wedge sitting up on end, in the face of which was a dial. Through it he began to run the wire from the spools, and, taking an earpiece, put another on ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve

... made trees with which to border its avenues, and every dear delight of swing and arbor and garden pool beloved in Barbara's play- days, was reproduced in miniature until Georgina loved them, too. She knew just where the bee-hives ought to be put, and the sun-dial, and the hole in the fence where the little pigs squeezed through. There was a story for everything. By the time she had outgrown her lisp she could make the whole fair structure by herself, without ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston

... which is largely used in the north of England. Here the instrument is partly of iron, partly of fireclay, and the difference in the expansion of the two materials is caused to act by a system of springs upon a needle revolving upon a dial. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various

... of stonework built pyramidically; its base is 267 feet by 87 feet; at the Top it is 250 feet by 8 feet. It is built in the same manner as we do steps leading up to a sun-dial or fountain erected in the middle of a square, where there is a flite of steps on each side. In this building there are 11 of such steps; each step is about 4 feet in height, and the breadth 4 feet ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson

... watch, shook it and held it to his ear—a precautionary process rendered necessary because of his habit of forgetting to wind it—then after a look at the dial, announced that, as it was only half-past ten, perhaps they had better go to ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln

... Moreover, by means of another brush, in the event of the engine being turned upon the wrong line, a lever may be made to shut off the steam, apply the brakes, blow the whistle, or move an index on a dial, recording a neglect of duty, or may ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various

... a penny from his pocket and dropped it into the slot. The indicator immediately flew around on the dial. ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor

... convention (see {glob}) to give paths from *several* big machines, in the hopes that one's correspondent might be able to get mail to one of them reliably (example: ...!{seismo, ut-sally, ihnp4}!rice!beta!gamma!me). Bang paths of 8 to 10 hops were not uncommon in 1981. Late-night dial-up UUCP links would cause week-long transmission times. Bang paths were often selected by both transmission time and reliability, as messages would often get lost. See {{Internet address}}, ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... reproduction, modified and expanded, of an article published in "The Dial, Boston, July, 1843," under the title of "The Great Lawsuit.—Man versus Men; ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... A dial with the sun setting, "Occasu desines esse" (Thy being ceases with its setting). The sun shining on a bush, "Si deseris pereo" (Forsake me, and I perish). The sun reflecting his rays from the bearer, "Quousque avertes" (How long wilt thou avert thy face)? Venus in a cloud, "Salva me, Domina" ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... sinister marvel of still shadows and flowing gleams mingling below in a black silence, arrested his attention. He stood looking over the parapet for a long time. The clock tower boomed a brazen blast above his drooping head. He looked up at the dial. . . . Half-past twelve of a ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... the length of the garden without speaking. Then Hadria came to a standstill at the sun-dial, at the crossing of the paths, and began absently to trace the figures of the hours, with the stalk ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... an ordinary clock, my friend. No, no. That one hand goes round the dial. As I put it, so it regulates the hour at which the door shall open. See! The hand points to eight. At eight the door opened, as ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins

... by myself. I described what was required and suggested various modifications and improvements, but the mechanical details were worked out exclusively by him. To test the rapidity of the camera, we photographed a "horse-timer" clock, with a dial marking quarter seconds, and succeeded in taking five distinct photographs in half a second with one lens, which has never before been accomplished excepting by Professor Marey,[1] at the College de France, who has taken successive views of flying birds, falling balls, etc., ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various

... as to ascertain the instant when, alter having successively diminished, it began to lengthen. By inclining his stick to the side opposite to the sun, Cyrus Harding made the shadow longer, and consequently its modifications would be more easily ascertained. In fact, the longer the needle of a dial is, the more easily can the movement of its point be followed. The shadow of the stick was nothing but the needle of a dial. The moment had come, and Cyrus Harding knelt on the sand, and with little wooden pegs, which he ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... carriage-horses; then to the miniature farm-yard, and the tiny ivy-covered dairy beyond; and just as I was beginning to feel the first qualms of my besetting humiliation, fatigue, Mrs. Mostyn led us round to the garden—a garden with high red walls, and a dial in the meeting-place of the flower-bordered paths; and we sat down in a rustic seat cosily fitted into one sunny corner, just behind a great ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer

... pocket a leather case, such as a woodsman might use to carry a large pocket compass, and removing the cover set out upon the table an instrument that was entirely enclosed in vulcanized rubber. On the top, under glass, was a dial, with a little needle which vibrated violently, but came to a standstill soon after being placed on the table. Two small platinum wires, about twelve inches long and carefully insulated, issued from opposite sides of ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney

... of them as successive. It is as if we were really at all three places at once. We see the joyous dance which is of central dramatic interest for twenty seconds, then for three seconds the wife in her luxurious boudoir looking at the dial of the clock, for three seconds again the grieved parents eagerly listening for any sound on the stairs, and anew for twenty seconds the turbulent festival. The frenzy reaches a climax, and in that moment we are suddenly again ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg

... twitch and gesture of your nervous hands, every bitter word, every poisonous phrase comes back to me: I remember the street or river down which we passed: the wall or woodland that surrounded us; at what figure on the dial stood the hands of the clock; which way went the wings of the wind, the shape and colour ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... place in daylight. The weary waiting that intervals may be corrected, the hitch with the advance-guard, the difficulty of loading the supply-waggons. The irritability of the chief, growing in intensity as he strikes match after match against his watch dial. Semi-mutinous resistance of orders on the part of Irregulars; lamentations from the major of the battery, whose horses have been standing hooked-in for the last half hour. How impossible it all seems,—how heartbreaking; yet everything shakes ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer

... human art, blended with soft gradations into the surrounding landscape. Even the rude fresco of the Mother of Sorrows over the door was half overgrown with a greenish, semi-visible moss which allowed the original colors to shine faintly through, and the coarse lines of the dial in the middle of the wall were almost obliterated by sun and rain. But what especially attracted Cranbrook's attention was a card, hung out under one of the windows, upon which was written, with big, scrawling letters,—"Appartamento Mobiliato ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... did not confine his benefactions to classical studies, important as these were. He imported a German to teach his scholars mathematics, and the scientific tastes of his students are well illustrated by the picturesque and curious dial, still in the centre of his College Quad, which was constructed by one of them in the reign of Elizabeth. It is well shown in our picture, as are also Foxe's charming low buildings, almost unaltered since the time ...
— The Charm of Oxford • J. Wells

... Nights. One set of Stevenson, all but his novels. Ever so many Maxfield Parrish pictures full of Prussian-blue skies. A house to put them in, with fireplaces. A lady's size motor-car that likes me. A plain cat with a tame disposition. A hammock. A sun-dial. (But that might be thrown in with the garden.) A gold watch-bracelet. All the colored satin slippers I want. A room big enough to put all father's ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer

... I was much amused to perceive with what frequency eyes were turned upon the dial-plate, through all the day so little regarded. Watches were drawn out, compared, and pronounced too slow. With some difficulty, one was found that had outrun its fellows, and, determined to be right, gave permission to the company to disperse, ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady

... of the rock, and placing his compass in a level position, permitted the needle to swing to a stationary position. He extracted a match from the tin box in his pocket and laid it upon the compass dial exactly parallel with the needle. Lying on his face, he squinted his eye along the match to a distant tree. Rising, he observed the tree that he might make no mistake, and returning to the face of the rock strode twenty of his best paces in the direction ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace

... "fly in amber," and add it to his stores. He was the easy victor in every foot-race, and took the Newdigate prize for poetry, in 1806. He burned the midnight oil, and looked through ruddy wine at the small hours chasing each other over the dial. For hours, almost whole days, he would sit silent at the helm of his boat on the Isis, his rapt eye peopling the vacant air with unutterable visions. He swam like a dolphin, rode like a Centaur, and De Quincey called him the best unprofessional male dancer ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various

... on my knees and began to fiddle with the dial, of course in vain. Miss Emory, with more practical decision of character, began to run through the innumerable bundles and loose papers in the desk, tossing them aside as they proved unimportant or not ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... something had happened to the old fashioned sun-dial that used to stand in the cemetery connected with the church; and that it had been placed up against the wall of the building. He knew, because he had once fallen over ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren

... thought, the whole ebb and flow of emotion, may be revulsed for the rest of an existence. Nothing can ever seem to us as it did: it is a blow upon the fine mechanism by which we think, and move, and have our being—the pendulum vibrates aright no more—the dial hath no account with time—the process goes on, but it knows no symmetry or order;—it was a single stroke that marred it, but the harmony ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various

... darkness prevailed in the high places of the world. Every martyr for the truth was a torch bearer, whose light was extinguished. The countries that suffered the greatest loss of their best citizenship received a check of more than a century's growth. The hand on the dial of progress was turned backward wherever the blighting inquisition was felt. Its blighting effects may yet be seen in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and other countries where the papacy exerts a controlling influence. Men, whose deeds are ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger

... machine, he took it down to them and exhibited it with pardonable pride. There was a dial on it exactly like a clock, although ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr

... nothing strong, nor thick, And golden foil all over them displayed, That purest sky with brightness they dismayed. High lifted up were many lofty towers And goodly galleries far overlaid, Full of fair windows, and delightful bowers, And on the top a dial told the timely hours. ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... n. A dedicated gateway machine with special security precautions on it, used to service outside network connections and dial-in lines. The idea is to protect a cluster of more loosely administered machines hidden behind it from {cracker}s. The typical firewall is an inexpensive micro-based UNIX box kept clean of critical data, with a bunch ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10

... switching equipment; modern services include telex, cellular, internet, international calling, caller ID, and leased data circuits domestic: Majuro Atoll and Ebeye and Kwajalein islands have regular, seven-digit, direct-dial telephones; other islands interconnected by high frequency radiotelephone (used mostly for government purposes) and mini-satellite telephones international: country code - 692; satellite earth stations - 2 Intelsat (Pacific Ocean); ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... has a clock with a dial thirty-eight feet across. In any other country this would be the largest clock in the world. In America it is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various

... vibrating trough; when, after a sufficient quantity has fallen into its higher side, it sinks down and discharges the rain which escapes by a tube. The vibrating action of this trough moves a train of wheel-work and indices, which register upon a dial plate the ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous

... particular part of the body, as is most suitable to the design of its creation; having first made an alteration in the face by its nerves, especially by the pathetic and oculorum motorii actuating its many muscles, as the dial-plate to that stupendous piece of clock-work which shows what is to be expected next from the striking part; not that I think the motion of the spirits in the sensory continued by the impression of the object ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... couple of minutes on his adornment; and with any other visitor it might have been accomplished, but Lady Camper disliked sitting alone in a room. She was on the square of lawn as the General stole along the walk. Had she kept her back to him, he might have rounded her like the shadow of a dial, undetected. She was frightfully acute of hearing. She turned while he was in the agony of hesitation, in a queer attitude, one leg on the march, projected by a frenzied tip-toe of the hinder leg, the very fatallest moment she could possibly ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... figures; does that change the time? Or, what amounts to the same thing, it may be so ill-regulated, the machinery may be so out of gear, that you are deceived. But morning, noon, and night do not regulate their face by your clock. There is a dial that unerringly marks 'the stately stoppings' of the sun of suns—let us regulate ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... with the "see by night" dial, to Roscoe, my small brother, who has wanted it ever since he ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher

... brother, form a prominent feature of the book, and are such as we may see any day in the school or home life of a well-cared-for and good-intentioned little boy. There are several quite pleasing full-page illustrations."—The Dial. ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May

... regard to prayer. For we pray not that we may change the Divine disposition, but that we may impetrate that which God has disposed to be fulfilled by our prayers, in other words "that by asking, men may deserve to receive what Almighty God from eternity has disposed to give," as Gregory says (Dial. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... DIAL CALENDAR.—This is a calendar which combines many good points. It is not only a monthly calendar, but weekly and daily as well. By means of two movable discs the calendar for the week appears in an opening ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 33, June 24, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... his gun, whistled to his dogs, and went off to the chase; while Strozzi, his eyes on the dial of the clock, awaited the hour for visiting his ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... the shrubbery. At last we paused and sat down on one of the many seats that invited us. Around us, on the great lawn, were many tropic or half-tropic plants, and the native roses, still abloom. Yonder stood the old bronze sun-dial that I knew so well—I could have read the inscription, I Mark Only Pleasant Hours; and I knew its penciled shadow pointed to a high and glorious noon.... It seemed to me that Heaven had never made a more perfect place or a more perfect day; nor, that ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough

... aspirations, stood, like the Alps whose shadow fell upon its birthplace, the lovely Lausaune, pride of the Pays de Vaud. The clepsydrae that measure the centuries as they drop from the dizzy cliffs—the glaciers, by the descent of which "time is marked out, as by a shadow on a dial," and which thunder out the high noon of each revolving year with their frozen tongues, as they crack beneath the summer's sun—have registered a new centennial circle, and at the very hour of its completion, Switzerland vindicates her ancient renown in these fair pages, at once ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... peak might hence be considered as the gnomon of a vast sun dial, the shadow projected from which on a certain day would point out the road to ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... an approximate idea of the vessel's depth in the water, and the dial connected with the sounding apparatus told him hour by hour that the distance from the bottom, as the vessel kept forward on the same plane, was becoming less and less. Consequently he determined, so long as he was able to proceed, to keep ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton

... Church which tried to compel Galileo to unsay the truth has been overborne by the growing unbelief of the age, even though our little children are yet taught that Joshua made the sun and moon stand still, and that for Hezekiah the sun-dial reversed its record. As Buckle, arguing for the ...
— Humanity's Gain from Unbelief - Reprinted from the "North American Review" of March, 1889 • Charles Bradlaugh

... and entertain the "nation's guest"? Is not every American young woman crazy to mate with a male of title? Does all this represent no retrogression?—is it not the backward movement of the shadow on the dial? Doubtless the republican idea has struck strong roots into the soil of the two Americas, but he who rightly considers the tendencies of events, the causes that bring them about and the consequences that flow ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... down the close to view his scattered bark, and to estimate the damage that had been done to him. At length that hour came which usually suspends all passions by the more imperious power of appetite—the hour of dinner: an hour of which it was never needful to remind Mr. Hill by watch, clock, or dial; for he was blessed with a punctual appetite, and powerful as punctual: so powerful, indeed, that it often excited the spleen of his more genteel or less hungry wife. "Bless my stars! Mr. Hill," she would oftentimes say, "I am really downright ashamed to see you ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth

... saving us and divorcing us from our ancient beliefs. The great literary magazines number perhaps a dozen, with a few in the front rank, such as the Century, Harper's, Scribner's, The Atlantic, Cosmopolitan, McClure's, Dial, North American Review, Popular Science Monthly, Bookman, Critic, and Nation. Such magazines I conceive to be the universities of the people, the great educators in art, literature, science, etc. Nothing escapes them. They are timely, beautiful, ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous

... without seeing anything, while the steady church-goers had refreshed the entire system by looking about without listening. And to show the truant people where their duty should have bound them, the haze had been thickening all over the sea, while the sun kept the time on the old church dial. This was spoken of for many years, throughout the village, as a Scriptural token of the proper ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... while we do not hear of him as a person, like Thales, of political eminence and activity, he was certainly the equal, if not the superior, of Thales in {8} mathematical and scientific ability. He is said to have either invented or at least made known to Greece the construction of the sun-dial. He was associated with Hecataeus in the construction of the earliest geographical charts or maps; he devoted himself with some success to the science of astronomy. His familiarity with the abstractions of mathematics perhaps accounts for ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall

... way they went on, and on, and on—in the language of the story-books—until at last the village lights appeared before them, and the church spire cast a long reflection on the graveyard grass; as if it were a dial (alas, the truest in the world!) marking, whatever light shone out of Heaven, the flight of days and weeks and years, by some new shadow on that ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... and closed the door. The phone had no dial. Evidently Seaford, like Whiteside, had no dial system. He started to pick up the receiver and inspiration struck him. If he could imitate the mate ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine

... to consider the pointed peak as the stylus of an immense sun-dial, the shadow of which pointed on one given day, like the inexorable finger of fate, to the yawning chasm which led into ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne

... reward to our ordinary acts, thoughts, and impulses, seeing that all our acts, thoughts, and impulses, good or bad, virtuous or criminal, are equally the mere expressions of certain inevitable physical changes in the brain, the mere register on the dial plate of consciousness of necessary predetermined complications in the working of certain atoms of the ...
— Dolly Reforming Herself - A Comedy in Four Acts • Henry Arthur Jones

... piece of mechanism is the lock of a safe! The man we bought it of gave us the programme that opens it. You go to the dial turn the knob, put your finger by your nose and wink. If you leave out the wink, the safe will not open, but we never leave out the wink. The trouble is, if there is a lady customer in with a bill, and we go to open ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck

... persons; 89% of phone network is automatic; poor service; cable and open wire local: NA intercity: trunk network is microwave; roughly 3,300 villages with no service (February 1990) international: 1 INTELSAT earth station; new digital international direct dial exchanges ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency

... this Dial will suit you very well, whom I know to be so good a Husband of your Time, that you won't let a Moment of that precious Thing be lost. It came out of the furthest Part of Dalmatia, and that's all the Commendation I shall ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus

... yet doth beauty, like a dial hand, Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived; So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand, Hath motion, and mine eye ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... introduced himself as George W. Jones, former Senator from Iowa. I have rarely met a more interesting man. He was then ninety-two years of age, apparently in perfect health, and as active as if, for his exclusive benefit, the hands had been turned back three decades upon the dial. He had been a delegate from the Territory embracing the present States of Iowa and Wisconsin, in the twenty-fifth Congress, when the sessions of the House were held in the Old Hall. Upon the admission of Iowa as a State, he was chosen a Senator, a position he held by successive elections ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... not on the dial of the sun The hours, the minutes, that his sands have run; Rather, as on those flowers that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... bowl, with handles." So far as regards the form, the change of Barniya into Vernique would be quite analogous to that change of Hundwaniy into Ondanique, which we have already met with. (See Dozy et Engelmann, Glos. des Mots Espagnols, etc., 2nd ed., 1867, p. 73; and Boerio, Diz. del. Dial. Venez.) ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... caught it once, when, breakfast over, she was tightening the sling that held the broken arm. I had prolonged the morning meal as much as I could, but when the wooden clock with the pink roses on the dial pointed to half after ten, and the mother with the duplicate youngsters had not come back, Miss West made the ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... began to draw out turnip-shaped watches from their fobs, and having first held the case to their ears to make sure that there was no deception, the dial was examined, and with a casual, "Guid nicht to ye—the goodwife will be waitin'," the members of the town council and other municipal dignitaries strolled off each ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett

... buildings were low and irregular, one portion of the roof thatched, another tiled. In the quadrangle there was an old-fashioned garden, with geometrical flower-beds, a yew tree hedge, and a stone sun-dial in the centre. A peacock stalked about in the morning light, and greeted the newly risen sun with a discordant scream. Presently a man came out of a half glass door under a verandah which shaded one side of the quadrangle, and strolled about the garden, stopping here and there to cut ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... preceded by a single vowel, or when the accent is not on the last syllable, should remain single before an additional syllable: as, toil, toiling; oil, oily; visit, visited; differ, differing; peril, perilous; viol, violist; real, realize, realist; dial, dialing, dialist; equal, equalize, equality; ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... He was standing by the sun-dial, perhaps ten paces from his victim. The man on the sled must have seen that something unusual was taking place, for he had risen to his knees, his whip singing viciously among ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London

... and it is Miss Emily Merlon's, too. You have made us acquainted with a charming creature, at least, Miles, by this going to sea. Her notions on such subjects are as accurate as a sun-dial." ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... the matting and eating 'em. Here, Senor Comandante Don Grubbynose, come and talk to me. (Lifts G. JUNIOR in his arms.) 'Want my watch? You won't be able to put it into your mouth, but you can try. (G. JUNIOR drops watch, breaking dial and hands.) ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... shade cast by the shrubs was but scanty, the noontide heat was torment; still, though minute followed minute and one-quarter of an hour after another crept by at a snail's pace, she was far too much excited to be sleepy. She needed no dial to tell her the time; she knew exactly how late it was as one shadow stole to this point and another to that, and, by risking the danger to her eyes of glancing up at the sun, she could make ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... wages, their hours, their recreation, their parish church, their priest, their school; for Little Poland was sufficient unto itself; and Kiska saw that he questioned with sympathy and understanding, and was pleased. On the dial of his office clock Shelby noted the hour of his appointment come and go, and from his window he caught a fleeting glimpse of Ruth at hers. She wore his favorite hat, with a gleam of red, which became her ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther

... striped curtains, and ornamented with pictures of birds and small, antique mirrors—the latter set in dark frames which were carved to resemble scrolls of foliage. Behind each mirror was stuck either a letter or an old pack of cards or a stocking, while on the wall hung a clock with a flowered dial. More, however, Chichikov could not discern, for his eyelids were as heavy as though smeared with treacle. Presently the lady of the house herself entered—an elderly woman in a sort of nightcap (hastily put on) and a flannel neck wrap. She belonged to that class of ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... the name, Athenaia is of course simply 'Athenian'; the shorter and apparently original form Athana, Athene is not so clear, but it seems most likely to mean 'Attic'. Cf. Meister, Gr. Dial. ii. 290. He classes under the head of Oertliche Bestimmungen: ha theos ha Paphia (Collitz and Bechtel, Sammlung der griechischen Dialekt-Inschriften, 2, 3, 14{a}, {b}, 15, 16). 'In Paphos selbst hiess die Goettin nur ha theos oder ha wanassa;—ha thios ha Golgia (61)—ha ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... was a special train for the bazaar. I remained alone in the bare carriage. In a few minutes the train drew up beside an improvised wooden platform. I passed out on to the road and saw by the lighted dial of a clock that it was ten minutes to ten. In front of me was a large building ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce

... cave, to which we have already referred, lies about two miles to the west. The quaint little Saxon church there is one of the few bearing evidences of its own date, ascertained by the discovery in 1771 of a Saxon sun-dial, which had survived under a layer of plaster, and was also protected by the porch. A translation of the inscription reads: 'Orm, the son of Gamal, bought St. Gregory's Minster when it was all broken and fallen, and he caused it to be made anew from the ground, for Christ ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home

... over; the gentlemen had dined and refreshed themselves with creature comforts; the vicissitudes, and tricks, and chances of the last twelve hours were canvassed—when the striking of many a clock, or the consultation of the pocket-dial, warned those who were invited to Mrs. O'Flanagan's party, that it was time to wash off the dust of the battle-field from their faces, and mount fresh linen and cambric. Those who were pleased to call ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover

... the tokens of decay that are coming upon us; nay, in spite even of our very sins; who would go back to the hours of his youthful experience, and have the shadow stand still at that point upon the dial of his life? Who, for the sake of its innocence and its freshness, would empty the treasury of his broader knowledge, and surrender the strength that he has gathered in effort and endurance? Who, for its ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin

... long procession. He saw a ruinous, ivy-grown hall, and an old, grave, formal garden, where, between long box hedges broken by fantastic yews, there walked a boy, book in hand. A man with a stately figure and a stern, careworn face met the boy, and they leaned upon a broken dial, and the father reasoned with the son of Right and Truth and Liberty, and something touched upon the Tyrannicides of old. The yew trees drooped their sombre boughs about the figures, and they were gone, and in their ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... pet-cock; a little spray of petrol came out with the escaping air; the hands of two dials on the left side of the cock-pit began turning slowly anti-clockwise; I forgot them and looked at the stars. Later I pressed a button on the dashboard and looked out at my starboard engine; a small dial was lit up. I looked at the port engine, a similar dial was lit up. I took my right hand from the wheel and pulled the throttle slightly back; again I star-gazed as if in a dream and without any volition I closed the pet-cock which I had ...
— Night Bombing with the Bedouins • Robert Henry Reece

... and on no other, I go about the 1st of May for lupine, or sun-dial, which makes the ground look blue from a little distance; on the other or northern side of the slope, the arbutus, during the first half of April, perfumes the wildwood air. A few paces farther on, in the bottom of a little spring run, the mandrake shades the ground with its miniature ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... it to be yesterday," said Martin, "yet I'm always so pleased with to-day that I never want it to be either. And as for old time, I read him by a dial which makes it ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon

... at half-past eight and have prayers and a Bible exercise. Different classes follow until eleven when a gong rings and everybody rushes into the garden, a lovely place with box- edged beds and a sun dial and gravel walks. There are myrtles and geraniums, great big bushes of them, and japonicas and heavenly wall-flowers and trees of lemon verbena and fuchsias up to the eaves. This is solid truth, and ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown

... the General was absorbed in his correspondence. The boot-black drew a tin putty blower from his pocket, took unerring aim, and nailed in a single shot the minute hand to the dial. Going on with his blacking, yet stopping ever and anon to glance over the General's plan of campaign, spread on the table before him, he was at last interrupted by the ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte

... a long corridor which divides the house unequally; on the right side there is one window, on the other, two. At the garden end, the corridor opens with a glass door upon a portico with steps to the lawn, where there's a sun dial and a plaster statue of Spartacus, painted to imitate bronze. Behind the kitchen, the builder has put the staircase, and a sort of larder which we are spared the sight of. The staircase, painted to imitate black marble with yellow veins, turns upon ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... returned. ANAXIMANDER, the successor of Thales in the Ionic school, lived from B.C. 610 to 547. He was distinguished for his knowledge of astronomy and geography, and is said to have been the first to introduce the use of the sun-dial into Greece. ANAXIMENES, the third in the series of the Ionian philosophers, lived a little later than Anaximander. He endeavoured, like Thales, to derive the origin of all material things from a single element; and, according to his theory, air ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith

... those hours of trial I had watched a calm clock dial, As the hands kept creeping, creeping,—they were creeping round to four, When the old man said, "They're forming with their bayonets fixed for storming: It's the death grip that's a coming,—they will try ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)

... lying on his rack of pain, learned to watch for her coming as the one hour of brightness in an interminable night of gloom. He made a sort of sun-dial of the cracks in the floor, and when the shadows reached a certain spot his tired eyes grew eager, and he turned his head to listen for the patter of the little tabi that was sure to ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice

... the south of the house was noted in a county famous for gardens. Mr. Bucknor prided himself on having every kind of known rose that would grow in the Kentucky climate. The garden had everything in it a garden should have—marble benches, a sun dial, a pergola, a summer house, a box maze and a fountain around which was a circle of stone flagging with flowering portulacca springing up in the cracks. The shrubs were old and huge, forming pleasant nooks for benches—now ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson

... The illuminated dial of my watch tells me that it is three minutes of one and I communicate the information to the rest of the Irish quartet. In three minutes, the little world that we look upon from our tree top is due to change with ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons

... at Fort William Henry; all the dead people who have been in the dust so long—even to the stout-armed cook that made the pastry—are alive again; the planet unwinds a hundred of its luminous coils, and the precession of the equinoxes is retraced on the dial of heaven! And all this for ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... that eventful day; the hands seemed to sweep round the dial on the Old State House as though they had been swords in pursuit of some dilatory debtor. It now lacked only fifteen minutes of two, and Monroe, sick at heart, turned his steps towards Milk Street, to announce the utter failure of his plan. Mr. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... here, during which the two lads looked out at the garden flooded with sunshine, where Nat was working very deliberately close by the sun-dial. And beyond him, at the lake, from which the sunbeams flashed whenever a fish or ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn

... refractory jest for a minute or two together, and perhaps fail to throw it in the end. And there is something singularly engaging, often instructive, in the simplicity with which he thus exposes the process as well as the result, the works as well as the dial of the clock. Withal he has his hours of inspiration. Apt words come to him as if by accident, and, coming from deeper down, they smack the more personally, they have the more of fine old crusted humanity, rich in sediment ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... row of sixty little houses. These, having their backs on the hills, must look, of course, to the centre of the plain, which is just sixty yards from the front door of each dwelling. Every house has a small garden before it, with a circular path, a sun-dial, and twenty-four cabbages. The buildings themselves are so precisely alike, that one can in no manner be distinguished from the other. Owing to the vast antiquity, the style of architecture is somewhat odd, but it is not for that reason the less strikingly ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe



Words linked to "Dial" :   timekeeper, controller, face, dial phone, indicator, telephone dial, clock dial, telephony, selector, dial telephone, finger hole, choose, timepiece, pick out, take, selector switch, operate, select, horologe, control, telephone



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