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Circular   Listen
adjective
Circular  adj.  
1.
In the form of, or bounded by, a circle; round.
2.
Repeating itself; ending in itself; reverting to the point of beginning; hence, illogical; inconclusive; as, circular reasoning.
3.
Adhering to a fixed circle of legends; cyclic; hence, mean; inferior. See Cyclic poets, under Cyclic. "Had Virgil been a circular poet, and closely adhered to history, how could the Romans have had Dido?"
4.
Addressed to a circle, or to a number of persons having a common interest; circulated, or intended for circulation; as, a circular letter. "A proclamation of Henry III.,... doubtless circular throughout England."
5.
Perfect; complete. (Obs.) "A man so absolute and circular In all those wished-for rarities that may take A virgin captive."
Circular are, any portion of the circumference of a circle.
Circular cubics (Math.), curves of the third order which are imagined to pass through the two circular points at infinity.
Circular functions. (Math.) See under Function.
Circular instruments, mathematical instruments employed for measuring angles, in which the graduation extends round the whole circumference of a circle, or 360°.
Circular lines, straight lines pertaining to the circle, as sines, tangents, secants, etc.
Circular note or Circular letter.
(a)
(Com.) See under Credit.
(b)
(Diplomacy) A letter addressed in identical terms to a number of persons.
Circular numbers (Arith.), those whose powers terminate in the same digits as the roots themselves; as 5 and 6, whose squares are 25 and 36.
Circular points at infinity (Geom.), two imaginary points at infinite distance through which every circle in the plane is, in the theory of curves, imagined to pass.
Circular polarization. (Min.) See under Polarization.
Circular sailing or Globular sailing (Naut.), the method of sailing by the arc of a great circle.
Circular saw. See under Saw.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Circular" Quotes from Famous Books



... lips which repress it. The second is when the tongue rotates around all the space between the interior of the jaws and the palate. The third is when the tongue moves up and down and gathers the particles which remain in the half circular canal formed by ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin

... side, and that by the Welland, St. Lawrence, and Rideau on the Canadian, being quite sufficient to prove that all the energies of the Canadians are required to compete with their rivals. And for this purpose I cite an extract from a circular put forth by the Free Trade Association of Montreal, which contains a good deal of sound reasoning on this subject, amidst, of course, much party feeling on the Free ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... with which, on the first experiment, he took hold of my hand at different distances, mentioning whether it was brought nearer to or carried farther from him, and conveying his hand to mine in a circular direction, that we [Ware and another physician] might be the better satisfied of the accuracy with which he did it." In this case, as in others of like nature, Ware could not, "although the patients had certainly been blind from early infancy," satisfy himself "that they had not, before this ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer

... the colonists scorched linen was a favorite tinder to catch the spark of fire; and till this century all the old cambric handkerchiefs, linen underwear, and worn sheets of a household were carefully saved for this purpose. The flint, steel, and tinder were usually kept together in a circular tinder-box, such as is shown in the accompanying illustration; it was a shape universal in England and America. This had an inner flat cover with a ring, a flint, a horseshoe-shaped steel, and an upper lid with a place to set a candle-end in, to carry the newly acquired light. Though I have ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle

... The planton gave me another shove, faced the door, knocked twice, and cried in accents of profound respect: "Monsieur le Gestionnaire"—after which he gazed at me with really supreme contempt, his neat pig-like face becoming almost circular. ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... to have performed a task of such magnitude. The natives call it "The Granary," and claim that that was its original use. Before the war the Germans had started in excavating, and discovered shafts leading deep down, and on top the foundations of a palace. Around its foot may be traced roadways and circular plots, and especially when seen from an aeroplane it looks as if there had at one time been an ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt

... up the circular stairway into the tower. He pulled the levers and shifted the valves and wheels there. But there was no emptying of the water tanks. The weight and pressure of water in them still held the submarine on the bottom of the sea, more than ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton

... he said, and he gave his front a circular rub as if to suggest that it was still fairly stored, after which he went on munching slowly as ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn

... upon glass, and on the drop is placed a circle of exceedingly thin glass; for, to magnify them sufficiently, it is necessary that the object-glass of the microscope should come very close to the organisms. Round the edge of the circular plate of glass the liquid is in contact with the air, and incessantly absorbs it, including the oxygen. Here, if the drop be charged with bacteria, we have a zone of very lively ones. But through this living zone, greedy of oxygen and appropriating ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... young companion towards a green hill in the centre of the park, on which stood a circular temple; that commanded a view of the country round for miles. They had walked in silence till they gained the summit of the sloped and gradual ascent; and then, as they stood still, side ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... top level of the reservoir which held a storage supply of water. The reservoir was a great semi-circular bank of earth and atones, wide enough on top for two ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker

... Nebular Hypothesis, which is substantially Democritus' concourse of atoms, only La Place endeavored to substitute circular motions under the law of gravitation, instead of Democritus' chance arrangement, as a sufficient cause for the formation and motions of planets. Herschel's discovery of the nebulae was hastily laid hold of by a number of ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... less particular in the choice of his studies; they were generally bent towards exploded chimeras*—the perpetuum mobile, the circular shot, philosopher's stone, silent gunpowder, making chains for fleas, nets for flies, and instruments to unravel ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot

... clump of trees, a little stucco pavilion crowned by a balustrade rose on arches of mouldering brick over a flight of steps that led down to a spring. Other steps curved up to a door above. Darrow mounted these, and opening the door entered a small circular room hung with loosened strips of painted paper whereon spectrally faded Mandarins executed elongated gestures. Some black and gold chairs with straw seats and an unsteady table of cracked lacquer stood on the floor of ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton

... peered at it closely. He remembered that the impression upon the wax sealing the mysterious envelope had had a circular depression in the centre. It had been made by the head of ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer

... and screeched. At the end it whistled, and when it was done, it rang a bell. Then the fragments that had dropped behind were automatically removed and the claw reached out for its next work. Around the idol iron stairs led up and ended in a circular gallery. ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... State and National. At the close of 1862 a commission was appointed by the Secretary of War to revise the articles of war and army regulations. Of this commission Major-General Hitchcock was chairman. They issued a circular calling for suggestions as to alterations supposed to be desirable, and a copy was sent to me among others. I took occasion to report the results of my own experience, and to trace the evils which existed to their sources in our military system. I called attention to the striking ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... and condensation of their walls, but farther, that those fibres, or bands, styled nerves by Aristotle, which are so conspicuous in the ventricles of the larger animals, and contain all the straight fibres (the parietes of the heart containing only circular ones), when they contract simultaneously by an admirable adjustment all the internal surfaces are drawn together as if with cords, and so is the charge of blood ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... of giddiness too, and hardly knew what HE was doing. With me, it was my liver that was out of order. I knew it was my liver that was out of order, because I had just been reading a patent liver-pill circular, in which were detailed the various symptoms by which a man could tell when his liver was out of order. I had ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome

... divert the imagination of the vulgar — Here a wooden lion, there a stone statue; in one place, a range of things like coffeehouse boxes, covered a-top; in another, a parcel of ale-house benches; in a third, a puppet-show representation of a tin cascade; in a fourth, a gloomy cave of a circular form, like a sepulchral vault half lighted; in a fifth, a scanty flip of grass-plat, that would not afford pasture sufficient for an ass's colt. The walks, which nature seems to have intended for solitude, shade, and silence, are filled with crowds of noisy people, sucking up the ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... his return, Paul found Miriam in the old wainscoted parlor seated by the fire. She appeared to be in deep and painful thought. Her elbow rested on the circular work-table, her head was bowed upon her hand, and her face was concealed by the ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... seeks to maintain itself in its natural state; hence, water in motion seeks to maintain its course according to the force by which it is propelled, and if it meets with opposition it finishes the length of the course it began in a circular and reflex motion. ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci

... the following. At the centre of the chosen area he dug a circular pit through the soil to the hard clay beneath, and cast into this, with solemn observances, some of the first fruits of the season. Each of his men also threw in a handful of earth brought from his native land. Then the pit was filled up, an altar erected upon it, and a fire kindled ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... so?' I kissed a circular hand-embroidered table-cloth. 'If I had known it was such fun furnishing my house, I'd have had the lover years ago and don't you ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston

... All the smiling, circular wrinkles in her face were working with amusement while her little black eyes twinkled like jet beads above the ruddy ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... meat fine and mix thoroughly with the white of two hard boiled eggs which has been pressed through a ricer. Season with salt, pepper, one teaspoonful mustard and moisten with thick mayonnaise. Saute circular pieces of bread until brown, then spread with the mixture. Sprinkle over the top a thin layer of hard boiled yolks and ...
— Stevenson Memorial Cook Book • Various

... sent to the parish priests, which they were to read from the pulpit in order to enlighten the people as to the folly of such outbreaks and as to the conditions of the trade in grain. "My people, when they know the authors of the trouble, will regard them with horror," said the royal circular. The authors of the trouble have remained unknown; to his last day M. Turgot believed in the existence of a plot concocted by the Prince of Conti, with ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... from a circular in relation to the causation and prevention of malaria and the life history and extermination of mosquitoes issued by the Department of Health, City ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague

... ratification. This idea was abandoned after a correspondence between Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Madison, and, instead of conditional ratification, New York provided for the resumption of her grants; but the amendments were put forth with a circular letter to the other States, in which it was declared that "nothing but the fullest confidence of obtaining a revision" of the objectionable features of the Constitution, "and an invincible reluctance ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... describe the plain, which had been cultivated during many ages by many generations of kings. It was rectangular, and for the most part straight and oblong; and what it wanted of the straight line followed the line of the circular ditch. The depth and width and length of this ditch were incredible and gave the impression that such a work, in addition to so many other works, could hardly have been wrought by the hand of man. But I must say what ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... circumstances this plant seemed to me worth studying, more especially from the great contrast between the small, dull, elongated, irregular flowers of the wild pansy, and the beautiful, flat, symmetrical, circular, velvet-like flowers, more than two inches in diameter, magnificently and variously coloured, which are exhibited at our shows. But when I came to inquire more closely, I found that, though the varieties were so modern, yet that much confusion and doubt prevailed about their parentage. Florists believe ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... of the comrades of Odysseus into swine and that type of animal signifies this, that the souls of undeserving men are changed into the likeness of brute beasts; they fall into the circular periphery of the whole, which he calls Circe; whereas she is justly represented as the child of the Sun, dwelling in the island of Aeaea, for this word [Greek omitted] is so called because men lament and wail by reason of death. But the prudent man Odysseus ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... excitement we toiled and strained, and at last extricated a great flat circular plate that seemed to weigh forty or fifty pounds, and stood it ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn

... with the yellow leaves of the Rint, bearing its deep red pods, while avenues of palms, not unlike the royal palm of the Earth, led in long vistas to clustering groups of houses, and we, too, caught glimpses of basking lakes on which, even as in the Earth, the patient fisherman in basket-like circular boats, waited for ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap

... directions of his leader, and worked his way through the obstruction of the myrtle-bushes until he arrived at a small circular place, in the centre of which, shaded by tall olive-trees, was a turf-seat surrounded by tendrils of ivy, and before which was a small table of wood, yet retaining ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... in Owen Kelly, musingly. "Harmless little circular things women wear on their wrists, aren't they? But awkward too at times,—amazingly awkward. As Olga has feelingly remarked, they can make a marvellously loud tinkle-tinkle at times. I know a little story about bangles, that ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown

... in a circular copse in the midst of the meadow; solitary rooks go over to their nests in the elms on the hill; cuckoos call, now this way and now that, as they travel round. While leaning on the grey and lichen-hung ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies

... to permit him to move a yard or so in any direction and by feeling the walls he found he was in a small circular room that had no outlet except the passage by which he had entered, and that was now closed by the door of steel. This was the end of the series ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum

... possession of the fortress in 1312, and the German army of Henry VII. marched from Rome, attacked, took, and burnt it, but were unable to make themselves, by force, masters of the citadel—that is, the tomb." The "fence of stone" refers to the quadrangular basement of concrete, on which the circular tower rests. The tower was originally coated with marble, which was stripped off for the purpose of making lime. The work of destruction is said to have been carried out during the interval between Poggio's (see his De Fort. Var., ap. Sall., Nov. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... in parallel lines and all precisely alike, of twin two-storied, russet-bricked houses of the same size and pattern, all looking as if they had been turned out of a mould, and all of them having little projecting circular bay-windows of wood, mostly English live oak, or teak from the Eastern Indies. All were painted green alike, and furnished with diamond panes, or bottle glass with bull's-eye centres, of the last century; ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson

... From the circular drive they wandered on, unheeding; and when they re-entered the Hall a fresh dance had begun. Under the arch they paused. Miss Arden's glance scanned the room and reverted to Roy. The last ten minutes ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... course knows, though here and there one perhaps may not be the worse for being reminded, consists of four coats—the sclerotic, outermost and strongest, which constitutes the white of the eye; the circular, tough, and coloured, yet pellucid, cornea, in the centre of which is seen the pupil; the choroid, full charged with black pigment, and lining the sclerotic; the retina, an expansion of the optic nerve, lining in its turn ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... the thrower. There are many kinds of boomerang—some for deadly strife, some for throwing at game, and the returning boomerang, which is framed only for amusement. If a native had no other missile at hand, he would dispatch it at a flight of ducks. Its circular course, however, makes it unfit for such a purpose, and there is a special boomerang made for throwing at birds. The latter keeps a straight course, and a native could throw it more than two ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... walls made of piled-up stone, or gates fashioned of twisted plants; either a secluded nunnery or Buddhist fane, at the foot of some hill; or some unsullied houses, hidden in a grove, tenanted by rationalistic priestesses; either extensive corridors and winding grottoes; or square buildings, and circular pavilions. But Chia Cheng had not the energy to enter any of these places, for as he had not had any rest for ever so long, his legs felt ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... Kossa," ordered von Gobendorff, naming a small military post on the Kiwa about thirty miles down the river, and at a point where the stream made a semi-circular bend before running in a south-westerly direction to ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman

... It is, indeed, little more than an extinct crater with a narrow rim of land around it to separate it from the sea. Through this rim the waters of the great Indian Ocean have cut a channel. The crater has thus become a beautiful salt lake, a mile in diameter, clear, deep, almost circular, and from whose border, on every side, rise the old volcanic walls draped in verdure. The strait connecting it with the sea is but three hundred feet wide, and at high tide ten feet deep,—thus affording an easy passage for small vessels ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... with the flag of the UK in the upper hoist-side quadrant and the Anguillan coat of arms centered in the outer half of the flag; the coat of arms depicts three orange dolphins in an interlocking circular design on a white background with blue ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... Haddon refers (Geographical Journal, Vol. XVI., p. 422) to conical ground houses with elliptical and circular bases found in villages on the top of steep hills behind the Mekeo district and on the southern spur of Mt. Davidson, and says that in some places, as on the Aduala affluent of the Angabunga (i.e., St. Joseph's) river, the houses are oblong, having a ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson

... room for more than a minute or two.... As she crossed the narrow cobbled roadway, with the grass growing luxuriantly between the rounded pebbles, she stumbled and recovered herself with a swift little forward run, and the circular feet twinkled with the rapidity of those of a ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson

... meeting-place of the freemasons. The university seemed almost too richly built; it is not finished yet, but is so beautiful that it would be an ornament to the largest capital. The butchers' market is also very pretty. It is of a semi-circular shape, and is surrounded by arched passages, in which the buyers stand, sheltered from the weather. The whole edifice is built of bricks, left in their natural state, neither stuccoed with mortar nor whitewashed. There are not many other palaces or fine public buildings, and ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer

... different from the rest: and so artfully contrived and concealed was the door which he now opened, and so suddenly did it yield to his hand, that it appeared literally the effect of enchantment, when the rock yawned, and discovered a circular cavern, lighted with brazen lamps, and spread with hangings and cushions of thick furs. Upon rude and seemingly natural pillars of rock, various antique and rusty arms were suspended; in large niches were deposited scrolls, clasped and bound with iron; and a profusion of strange and uncouth ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... composed of silica, a mineral that the Geyser water holds in solution, and which from the constant overflowing of the water, deposits layers of beautiful enamel, which at the top is too hard to detach, although round the base soft and crumbly. The basin is nearly circular, and is generally, except after an eruption, full to the brim, and always steaming, the water at the ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... is situated in the centre of a broad street. The Keizers Gracht, or Canal, is one hundred and forty feet wide. They are not circular, but form the sides of an irregular decagon. Other canals intersect the principal ones, so that all parts of the city may be visited in boats or vessels. The River Amstel flows through the town by a winding course; and Amsterdam is derived from the name of this stream and ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic

... a paper in The Crypt, an antiquarian journal, printed at Ringwood, Hants, in the year 1827. The writer observes that Dr. Milner has uniformly applied the term Saxon to the circular arches in this structure, as well as to similar specimens; but subsequent topographers have arrived at the more probable conclusion, that very slight remains, if any, now exist of ecclesiastical edifices by ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various

... were to cut my throat,—which in itself will be difficult,—you would only find the trifle of gold which I have got for our journey as far as 'Frisco. That won't do you much good. The rest is in circular notes, which to you would ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope

... conduct her to Orleans, then to Tours, and she went finally to Blois. The uncertainty which prevailed respecting the destiny of Maria Louisa is proved by a document which I have in my possession, and of which there cannot be many copies in existence. It is a circular addressed to the prefects by M. de Montalivet, the Minister of the Interior, who accompanied the Empress. In it a blank is left for the seat of the Government, to which the prefects are desired to send their communications. In ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... salon that he entered, communicated with a smaller, circular one, hung with Japanese silk draperies, and lighted by a Venetian chandelier that cast a subdued light over the divans upon which some of the guests sat chatting. Sulpice immediately divined, as if by instinct, that Marianne was there. He went straight in that direction, and as he entered ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... under his arm a huge pasteboard portfolio. He seemed hurried and nervous. "I am on my way to the office of the International Biscuit Turning Machine Company," he explained to Prince. "I can't stop at all. I have here the layout of a circular designed to push on to the market some more of that common stock of theirs that hasn't paid ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson

... grows down over the lower white hemisphere and leaves free only the yolk plug; he observed the segmentation cavity and the archenteron, but thought that the former became the alimentary canal; he observed and interpreted rightly the formation of the medullary folds. The circular blastopore in the frog in later years often went by the name of the ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell

... foundations of a wall have latterly been discovered, dividing it lengthwise through the centre, and continued for some distance into the town; so that the whole may not inaptly be represented by a Jewtrump—the tongue being the division, the circular end the present Multangular Tower, continued by walls on each side. This building, we have every reason to conjecture, was the Greek stadium or Roman circus, which authors tell us was a narrow piece of ground ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... it too. 'Twas a pre-ordained harmony. After two or three trials I felt that the Manitou was built for me, and I was built for the Manitou. We ran together like parts of one mechanism. I was always famed for my circular ankle-action; and in this new machine, ankle-action was everything. Strength of limb counted for naught; what told was the power of 'clawing up again' promptly. I possess that power: I have prehistoric feet: my remote progenitors must ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... the outer or commercial harbour, a longish rectangle with the narrow end turned to the sea, from whose entrance, only 70 feet wide, broad quays stretched along the water on both sides, and the inner circular war-harbour, the Cothon,(14) with the island containing the admiral's house in the middle, which was approached through the outer harbour. Between the two passed the city wall, which turning eastward from the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... the chests to the light and took out garments of several sorts and of a variety of fashions. There were dresses of calico and delaine of the Civil War days, a curious cape which we thought had been called a "circular," a pretty silk apron with a bib, once precious to some young girl. Some of the waists were very slim, closely following the outlines of Lady Maude. Others were different—oh, very much so. I think these were of an earlier ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine

... very few minutes of noon. Laying flat on his stomach, he took the elevation and made the notes on a piece of tissue-paper at his head. With sun-blinded eyes, he snapped shut the vernier (a graduated scale that subdivides the smallest divisions on the sector of the circular scale of the sextant) and with the resolute squaring of his jaws, I was sure that he was satisfied, and I was confident that the journey had ended. Feeling that the time had come, I ungloved my right hand and went forward to congratulate him on the success of our eighteen years of effort, ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson

... and across the lobby of the United Nations Administration Building. He took a spur off the main corridor, and came to a doorway with a small circular staircase beyond it. At the bottom of the stairs he opened a steel door and stepped into ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse

... as they looked on her from above, but when they came down to her, so clear that none could see where water ended and where air began, hurried through the city in many a stream. Beyond it rose the "White Camp,"' the "Venta Belgarum," the circular earthwork of white chalk on the high down. Within the city rose the ancient minster church, built by Ethelwold,—ancient even then,—where slept the ancient kings; Kennulf, Egbert, and Ethelwulf the Saxons; and by them the Danes, Canute the Great, and Hardicanute ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... of the ether, in the profound darkness, an enormous mass appeared. It was like a moon, but an incandescent moon whose brilliancy was all the more intolerable as it cut sharply on the frightful darkness of space. This mass, of a circular form, threw a light which filled the projectile. The forms of Barbicane, Nicholl, and Michel Ardan, bathed in its white sheets, assumed that livid spectral appearance which physicians produce with the fictitious light of ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne

... which was sung in a sonorous nasal voice. This was a tea man. In one hand he carried a bright brass tea-urn of boiling water; in the other, several glasses, which he continually jingled against one another. Fastened round his waist he wore a circular tin case, containing glasses, a tea-pot, sugar, lemons, and tea-spoons. The tea man continues his walk through the streets till the day is far advanced, and he meets with a great many customers, for quite a number of Arabs consider a cup of tea a good ...
— Harper's Young People, July 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... Episcopos." He meant the Bishop, who perhaps pays the place periodic visits, his palace being in Castro, the largest town on the island. A candle—a mere taper—had been lighted for each of us on entering, and was set in a circular candlestick. For this performance we were expected to pay of course. Before leaving I dropped a piastre (2-1/2d.) into a plate, and handed Thomson another, but he finding he had three British pennies dropped all in, greatly to the delight of our guide into ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson

... in the edition of 1538, except "The Astrologer," would prove little of themselves as to the date of execution. But, luckily, there exists in the Cabinet at Berlin a set of coarse enlarged drawings in Indian ink, on brownish paper, of twenty-three of the series. These are in circular form; and were apparently intended as sketches for glass painting. That they are copied from the woodcuts is demonstrable, first, because they are not reversed as they would have been if they were the originals; ...
— The Dance of Death • Hans Holbein

... original edge furnishes proof in two respects that this was not a watch-glass. In the first place, on taking a careful tracing of this piece of the edge, I found that its curve was part of an ellipse; but watch-glasses, nowadays, are invariably circular. In the second place, watch-glasses are ground on the edge to a single bevel to snap into the bezel or frame; but the edge of this object was ground to a double bevel, like the edge of a spectacle-glass, ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman

... Ledwich glanced at the mistress's watch, in its pasteboard tower, in Gothic architecture, and insisted on proceeding to business. So they all sat down round a circular table, with a very fine red, blue, and black oilcloth, whose pattern was inseparably connected, in Ethel's mind, with absurdity, ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... letter heavier, I enclose you the Cardinal Legate's (our Campeius) circular for his conversazione this evening. It is the anniversary of the Pope's tiara-tion, and all polite Christians, even of the Lutheran creed, must go and be civil. And there will be a circle, and a faro-table, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... circular structure thirty feet in diameter rose a few feet only above the soil, like the upper part of a sunken cylinder. Its top was flat, and large flags of stone formed a rough staircase leading to its roof. In the centre, a square opening appeared, out ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... not often that Silas Tripp went to New York. The expense was a consideration, and again he found it difficult to leave his business. But he had received a circular from an investment company in Wall Street, offering ten per cent. interest for any money he might have to invest. High interest always attracts men who love money, and it so happened that Silas had five hundred dollars invested. The difference ...
— Chester Rand - or The New Path to Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr

... morning. All were in the best of spirits. So they started. On for miles through interminable streets of houses that bordered the circular shore, through crowds of sheep, droves of cattle, dense masses of human beings, through which innumerable caleches darted like meteors amid the stars of heaven. Here came the oxen of Southern Italy, stately, solemn, long-horned, cream-colored; there marched great ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille

... it, that enveloping circular garment, with and without the hood, and clasped at the throat, in which the Mother of God is invariably depicted. Her cape is ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank

... suspended amidships. Marked increase in the size of the steering and stabling planes characterized the appearance of the ship when compared with earlier types. She was at the outset a lucky ship. She cruised through Alpine passes into Switzerland, and made a circular voyage carrying eleven passengers and flying from Friedrichshaven to Mayence and back via Basle, Strassburg, Mannheim, and Stuttgart. The voyage occupied twenty-one hours—a world's record. The ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot

... name of an "Atoll." This is, to all intents and purposes, an encircling reef, without anything to encircle; or, in other words, without an island in the middle of its lagoon. The atoll has exactly the appearance of a vast, irregularly oval, or circular, breakwater, enclosing smooth water in its midst. The depth of the water in the lagoon rarely exceeds twenty or thirty fathoms, but, outside the reef, it deepens with great rapidity to 200 or 300 fathoms. The depth immediately outside the barrier, or encircling, ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley

... a blinding light flew up like a circular sunset around him, a dreadful twinge, as of hair and skin and skull being jerked from his head with the strength of a giant! For the millionth part of a second he was at a loss to understand what had happened. Then, ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"

... part. We referred to a letter of Dudley's, and to Aberdeen's recent instruction to Lord Heytesbury, and likewise to the various declarations of moderation put forth by the Emperor Nicholas. Several ways were started of expressing our opinion—a sort of circular to the Powers which signed the Treaty of the Congress—a ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)

... miles beyond Karyetein we passed close by a desperate battle in progress between the Giath and Amour Arabs, and a powerful caravan proceeding from Baghdad to Damascus. The camels of the caravan were formed into a circular rampart, the head of one camel being made fast to the next; and from behind this living rampart the hardy villagers, who were bringing provisions for their families from beyond the Euphrates, defended themselves throughout ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... of general resort wherein I do not often make my appearance; sometimes I am seen thrusting my head into a round of politicians at Will's [Coffeehouse] and listening with great attention to the narratives that are made in those little circular audiences. Sometimes I smoke a pipe at Child's, and, whilst I seem attentive to nothing but The Postman, overhear the conversation of every table in the room. I appear on Sunday nights at St. James's, and sometimes ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... basin, at the other an arched gate-way leading into grass-grown cloisters—the vast nave is visible from end to end. This nave is absolutely empty. Every thing tells of expectation, of anticipation. The mighty Lombard pillars on either side—supporting a triforium gallery of circular arches and slender pillars of marble fretwork, delicate as lace—are wreathed and twined with red taffetas bound with golden bands. The gallery of the triforium itself is draped with arras and rich draperies. Each dainty column is decked with ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot

... Pombo's neck with his thumbs, and caused the head to begin a rapid circular movement ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... Angouleme; he would climb up the rocky staircases into the old city and walk into his son's workshop to see how business went. There stood the presses in their places; the one apprentice, in a paper cap, was cleaning the ink-balls; there was a creaking of a press over the printing of some trade circular, the old type was still unchanged, and in the dens at the end of the room he saw his son and the foreman reading books, which the "bear" took for proof-sheets. Then he would join David at dinner and go back to Marsac, chewing the ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac

... the castle was tilting at the ring. A horizontal bar was fixed in a post, and at the end of a hanging supporter was placed a circular ring, as shown in the above illustrated title. By raising or lowering the bar the ring could be adjusted to the proper height—generally about the level of the left eyebrow of the horseman. The object was to ride swiftly some eighty paces and run the lance through ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... the larger pebbles from the pan, added water, and began to swirl the contents around with a circular motion. Each turn flirted some of the sand and water over the pan's beveled edge. Every little while he renewed the water. At last the pan's contents were reduced to a half dozen, irregular, dirty, little lumps and a handful of "black sand" in which ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet

... rose from the midst of the garden, followed by a crash and an instant later by a splash that interrupted another yell. I snatched Antoine's lantern and ran down the steps toward the scene of commotion. When I reached the circular pool the jet was still playing gayly, but the waters on one side were in furious agitation. Two men were rolling and tumbling about as though bent upon drowning each other. I swung the lantern over them just as Dutch got upon his feet, gripping his antagonist ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson

... of our solar system, and the mass revolved, there is reason to believe that ringlike separations took place in it. Whirling in the manner indicated, the mass of vapour or dust would flatten into a disk or a body of circular shape, with much the greater diameter in the plane of its whirling. As the process of concentration went on, this disk is supposed to have divided into ringlike masses, some approach to which we can discern in the existing nebulae, which ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... according to the speed desired by the occupants. When rain comes on, the man puts up the hood, and ties you and it closely up in a covering of oiled paper, in which you are invisible. At night, whether running or standing still, they carry prettily-painted circular paper lanterns 18 inches long. It is most comical to see stout, florid, solid- looking merchants, missionaries, male and female, fashionably- dressed ladies, armed with card cases, Chinese compradores, and Japanese peasant men and women flying ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... went to the island of Mindoro. Among other islands passed was that of Banton, where lived certain Spaniards, who had gone there in vessels belonging to friendly Indians. The island of Banton is about fifteen leagues from Cibuyan. It is a small circular island, high and mountainous, and is thickly populated. The natives raise a very large number of goats here, which they sell in other places. The natives of this island of Banton, as well as those of Cibuyan, are handsome, and paint themselves. From the island of Banton to that of Bindoro ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair

... manifestly absurd, and seldom has even a tolerably good effect. It was the quackery of a day.[5] The good masters did not work upon it. It is, in fact, a little truth taken out of a greater, and misapplied—a part of that circular character of composition, as it were a principle of reflection, by which lines close in upon or recede from each other. We have, in a former paper in this Magazine, treated of this principle—to dwell on it now would take us far from our purpose. As ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... of the last moments of daylight, I rode cautiously round the house, and, keeping in the shadow of the trees, had no difficulty in discovering at the north-east corner the balcony of which I had been told. It was semi-circular in shape, with a stone balustrade, and hung some fifteen feet above a terraced walk which ran below it, and was separated from the chase ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman

... difficulty by saluting the nearest Moslem or by a change of words Allah Yahd-k (Allah direct thee to the right way) or "Peace be upon us and the righteous worshipers of Allah" (not you) or Al-Samm (for Salam) alayka poison to thee. The idea is old: Alexander of Alexandria in his circular letter describes the Arian heretics as "men whom it is not lawful to salute or ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... objects by means of the visual rays, which are imaginary straight lines drawn from the eye to the various points of the thing we are looking at. As those rays proceed from the pupil of the eye, which is a circular opening, they form themselves into a cone called the Optic Cone, the base of which increases in proportion to its distance from the eye, so that the larger the view which we wish to take in, the farther must ...
— The Theory and Practice of Perspective • George Adolphus Storey

... face crowned the extraordinary structure like a blossom, scarcely controlling its laughter. She was as tall as her mother, and as imperious, as crested, and proud; and in spite of the pigtail, the girlish semi-circular comb, and the loose foal-like limbs, she could support as well as her mother the majesty of the gimp-embroidered dress. Her eyes sparkled with all the challenges of the untried virgin as she minced about the ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... considerably less so in the privacy of her dressing-room; she had evidently expended much thought upon supplementing the niggardliness of Nature. Her unwashed-looking black hair was dressed very high and stuck with immense pins. Large, circular, highly colored, imitation jade rings dangled in tiers from her ear-lobes, and at least eight rows of colored beads covered the front of her loose, fringed, embroidered, beaded gown. She had a haggard face, deeply lined and badly painted, but something, an emanation perhaps, seemed to proclaim ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton

... weeks. The soles which you are at this moment presenting to me are slightly scorched. For a moment I thought they might have got wet and been burned in the drying. But near the instep there is a small circular wafer of paper with the shopman's hieroglyphics upon it. Damp would of course have removed this. You had then been sitting with your feet outstretched to the fire, which a man would hardly do even in so wet a June as this if he were in ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... who are unable to walk. Hon. A.H. Stephens, M.C., and hundreds of others use them. Send for Circular to ...
— The Nursery, No. 165. September, 1880, Vol. 28 - A Monthly Magazine For Youngest Readers • Various

... of the room and made a low, circular bow. In the effort to recall that "piece" he had spoken the year previous in Sunday-school, his brow puckered and his grey eyes took on a look of intense thought. His emphasis fell in ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... and Jefferson in forcing issues for complete separation from England and for the formal Declaration of Independence, Samuel Adams was himself the author of the celebrated circular letter addressed by the assembly of Massachusetts to the speakers of the several assemblies in other colonies. In 1774 he was chosen a member of the Continental Congress, where he took a prominent ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... die on their hands, and that rather than face the results of such a contingency they would attempt to obtain some obscure but experienced medical aid, and in a way which would give the physician no inkling of his patient's identity or whereabouts. I therefore sent out that circular letter to every doctor in Illington, warning each one to come to me in the event of his having received a mysterious summons. It worked, as you know, and ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander

... until this day. I have said that no man could read the inscriptions on the rings: they were all the same—the three as like as the leaves of a trefoil. They were all large enough for the largest man's thumb, and made of the purest crown gold: the shield was of a circular form, bearing in the centre the figure of a Knight Templar in full armour, with spur and shield, keeping watch before the Temple at Jerusalem; but what the characters around the figure signified, I leave ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... mighty mass as so much bulk, and then ascertain the numbers by a computation. They made the measure itself in the following manner: They counted off, first, ten thousand men, and brought them together in a compact circular mass, in the middle of the plain, and then marked a line upon the ground inclosing them. Upon this line, thus determined, they built a stone wall, about four feet high, with openings on opposite sides of it, by which men might enter and go out. When the ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... currents in the northern Pacific are dominated by a clockwise, warm-water gyre (broad circular system of currents) and in the southern Pacific by a counterclockwise, cool-water gyre; in the northern Pacific, sea ice forms in the Bering Sea and Sea of Okhotsk in winter; in the southern Pacific, sea ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... to Grandfather Iden's door consisted of one wide stone of semi-circular shape, in which the feet of three generations of customers had worn a deep grove. The venerable old gentleman, for he was over ninety, was leaning on the hatch (or lower half of the door), in the act of handing some of his cakes ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies

... Messrs. Shaw, McTavish, and several other partners of the North-West Company were under detention at this place we took the earliest opportunity of visiting them; when, having presented the general circular and other introductory letters with which I had been furnished by their agent Mr. Simon McGillivray, we received from them the most friendly and full assurance of the cordial endeavours of the wintering partners of their company to promote the interests of the Expedition. ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin

... is, a circular-telegram has just been sent out from Scotland Yard, saying that by the express from Edinburgh due at King's Cross at 10.45 last night the Archduchess Marie Louise, niece of the Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria, was a passenger. She had been staying at Balmoral, and travelled ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux

... at Paris when they were there together, and that he had said he would get one for himself some day. This hint that there might be more than mere matter in those surroundings set his eyes to roving. That revolving bookcase by the desk, the circular kind he had always wanted, and in it the books he liked to have at hand—Montaigne and Don Quixote, Shakespeare and Shelley and Swinburne, the Encyclopedia, the statistical yearbooks; on top, his favorites among the magazines. And the desk itself—a huge spread of cleared surface—an enormous ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips

... here that Dr. Brende had placed his Arctic laboratory—as far from the haunts of man as he could find—a hundred miles from the nearest person, so he told me. And as I gazed about me I realized how isolated we were. Not a car in the whole circular panorama of sky; no sign of vessel on the water; no towns on ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings

... hillock, whence it could have been erupted; and the only trace of a crater which I was able to discover, consisted of some inclined beds of scoriae at one of its corners. At the distance of fifty yards from a second level-topped patch of lava, but of much smaller size, I found an irregular circular group of masses of cemented, scoriaceous breccia, about six feet in height, which doubtless had once formed the point of eruption. The third orifice is now marked only by an irregular circle of cemented scoriae, about four yards in diameter, and rising in its highest point scarcely ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin

... a court in Heaven above, to which all good Britons look up, and about which they read with exactly the same thrills as they read the Court Circular. The two courts have the same ethical code and the same manners; their Sovereigns are jealous, greedy of attention, self-conscious and profoundly serious, punctilious and precise; their existence consisting of an endless round ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... enthusiasm. Before long he even learned to start them himself; and a most diverting sight it was to see this twenty-two-months old youngster driving nails like an infant Hercules. For the fastening of the roofing-paper they used little circular plates of tin called "cotterels"; and these also Cedric must learn to use. So a new phrase was added to the vocabulary of "dam-fool talk". "Bongie cowtoos" was the name of the operation; for a couple Of years thereafter, whenever Corydon and Thyrsis ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair



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