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Dial   Listen
noun
Dial  n.  
1.
An instrument, formerly much used for showing the time of day from the shadow of a style or gnomon on a graduated arc or surface; esp., a sundial; but there are lunar and astral dials. The style or gnomon is usually parallel to the earth's axis, but the dial plate may be either horizontal or vertical.
2.
The graduated face of a timepiece, on which the time of day is shown by pointers or hands.
3.
A miner's compass.
Dial bird (Zool.), an Indian bird (Copsychus saularius), allied to the European robin. The name is also given to other related species.
Dial lock, a lock provided with one or more plates having numbers or letters upon them. These plates must be adjusted in a certain determined way before the lock can be operated.
Dial plate, the plane or disk of a dial or timepiece on which lines and figures for indicating the time are placed.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Dial" Quotes from Famous Books



... monopoly against our clothiers. Our clothiers would probably have been able to defend themselves against it; but it happens that the greater part of our principal clothiers are themselves likewise dyers. Watch-cases, clock-cases, and dial-plates for clocks and watches, have been prohibited to be exported. Our clock-makers and watch-makers are, it seems, unwilling that the price of this sort of workmanship should be raised upon them by ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... person, but that it was the result of the modification of another watch which kept time but poorly; and that this again had proceeded from a structure which could hardly be called a watch at all—seeing that it had no figures on the dial and the hands were rudimentary; and that going back and back in time we came at last to a revolving barrel as the earliest traceable rudiment of the whole fabric. And imagine that it had been possible to show that all these ...
— Criticisms on "The Origin of Species" - From 'The Natural History Review', 1864 • Thomas H. Huxley

... was placed on the back lawn at Gad's Hill, was mounted on a square pedestal, on the sides of which were representations of the four seasons, and a sun-dial crowned the capital. Something like it, but a little modified, appears in one of Mr. Luke Fildes's beautiful illustrations to the original edition of Edwin Drood, entitled "Jasper's Sacrifices." Three more of the balustrades now ornament Mr. Ball's ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes

... and your unrivalled past; Mixed up with flashes of old things afar— Old childish things at home, down Wessex way. In the snug village under Blackdon Hill Where I was born. The tumbling stream, the garden, The placid look of the grey dial there, Marking unconsciously this bloody hour, And the red apples on my father's trees, ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... ancient belief was re-established, yet it was both physically and morally impossible to return wholly to the baldness and austere simplicity of those early ages, in which art and literature were unknown. For a while it seemed as though the miracle would be performed, of turning back the dial of the ages and of plunging Japan into the fountain of her own youth. Propaganda was instituted, and the attempts made to convert all the Japanese to Shint[o] tenets and practice were for a while more lively than edifying; but the scheme was on the whole ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... automatic clerk at the window beside the metal steps, taking care to avoid contact with them. Within six feet, the temperature of his body brought the thermostatic control into action; the window slid upward and the dummy appeared. He turned the dial to Albany. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various

... hoping but for the future, space held no obstacles—time was an oblivion. Years pass as days, hours as moments, when the varying emotions which mark their existence on the memory, and distinguish their succession on the dial of the heart, exist no longer either for happiness or woe. Dead to all freshness of feeling, the mind of Ulpius, during the whole term of his wanderings, lay numbed beneath the one idea that possessed it. It was only at the expiration of those unheeded years, when the ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... bronze figure surmounting the odd little hydraulic edifice strike the hour with his hammer on the bell of the clock. Meanwhile they examined the gilt bronze statue of Christ, standing beside the Samaritan, who was leaning on the curb of the well, the astronomic dial with its zodiac, the grotesque stone mask pouring out the water drawn up from the river below, the stout figure of Hercules supporting the whole thing, and the hollow statue, perched on the topmost pinnacle, that served as a weathercock, like the Fortune on the ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... the events of my past life were rising before me. The hands on the dial of time went back a score of years, and I was a young man of twenty-one, living in chambers off Holborn. One evening there burst over London a fearful thunderstorm, and hearing a knock at my door, I opened it, to find a beautiful girl named Dorothy, the daughter of the housekeeper, standing there. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... he grew older, and shared in the sports of his companions, a strange thing came to pass. Beside the shadow that follows us all in the light, another, like that, but something deeper, began to go with Roger Pierce,—not falling with the other, a dial-mark to show the light that cast it, but capriciously to right or left; on whomever or whatever was nearest him at the moment, there that Shadow lay; and as time crept on, the Shadow pertinaciously ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various

... station on the chalk downs. The decisive change from this was made in 1853.—As the result of my examination and enquiries into the subject of sympathetic clocks, I established 8 sympathetic clocks in the Royal Observatory, one of which outside the entrance gate had a large dial with Shepherd's name as Patentee. Exception was taken to this by the solicitor of a Mr Bain who had busied himself about galvanic clocks. After much correspondence I agreed to remove Shepherd's name till Bain had legally established his claim. ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy

... Ebeye and Kwajalein islands have regular, seven-digit, direct-dial telephones; other islands interconnected by shortwave radiotelephone ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... present agitation he was not likely to woo slumber with success. . . . He slipped on his coat again and descended the stairs, latchkey in hand. A lamp burned in the hall, and by the light of it he read the hour on the dial of a grandfather's clock that stood sentry beside the dining-room door— five-and-twenty minutes past ten. The Baskets would not be returning for another hour at least. He unlatched the front door, stepped out, and ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... more civilized with savages have, the world over, a family resemblance. Like many a man before him and after, Smith casts about for a propitiatory wonder. He has with him, so fortunately, "a round ivory double-compass dial." This, with a genial manner, he would present to Opechancanough. The savages gaze, cannot touch through the glass the moving needle, grunt their admiration. Smith proceeds, with gestures and what Indian words he knows, to deliver a scientific lecture. Talking ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston

... was prophetic. One could see the house by peeping through the bars of the gates. It was a gloomy-looking place, with a tall yew hedge round it; but in the summer-time some flowers grew about the sun-dial in the grass plat. This house was called the Hall, and Squire Carson lived there. One Christmas—it must have been the Christmas before my father emigrated, or I should not remember it—we children went to a Christmas-tree festivity ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard

... who it was said still held the original leases. Others who printed and published in the vicinity were W. Copeland, "at the signe of the Rose Garland;" Bernard Lintot, "at the Cross Keys;" Edmund Curll, "at the Dial and Bible," and Lawton Gulliver, "at Homer's Head," against St. Dunstan's Church; and Jacob Robinson, on the west side of the gateway "leading down the Inner Temple Lane," an establishment which Dickens must have known as Groom's, the confectioner's. ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun

... supernatural that makes the narrative so curious, and like truth. The sun is shining with the utmost brilliancy in a great quiet park or garden; there is a palace in the background, and a statue basking in the sun quite lonely and melancholy; there is a sun-dial, on which is a deep shadow, and in the front stands Peter Schlemihl, bag in hand: the old gentleman is down on his knees to him, and has just lifted off the ground the SHADOW OF ONE LEG; he is going to fold it back neatly, as one does the tails of a coat, and will stow it, without any creases or ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray

... upland slopes the 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

... and nearer to his fear every step. He is now just on the borders of Esau's country, and close upon opening communications with his brother. At that critical moment, just before the finger of the clock has reached the point on the dial at which the bell would strike, the needed help comes, the angel guards draw near and camp beside him. It is always so. 'The Lord shall help her, and that right early.' His hosts come no sooner and no later than we need. If they appeared before ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... composed of a metallic vessel or tube which contains the liquid to be exposed to heat, and of a spring manometric apparatus communicating with the tube, and by means of which the existing temperature is shown. The dial may be provided with index needles to show minimum and maximum temperatures, as well as be connected with electric bells (Fig. 1) giving one or more signals at maximum and minimum temperatures. The vessel to contain the liquid may be of any form whatever, but ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various

... the sun where the dial face moves. I in the shadow where Time stays still. To me it is every day a new tale,' ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford

... setting sun, the setting sun, How glorious it gaed down; The cloudy splendour raised our hearts To cloudless skies aboon! The auld dial, the auld dial, It tauld how time did pass; The wintry winds hae dung it down,— Now hid 'mang weeds ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... grew restless. To cure this, he set to work and finished a large dial which he had long intended to present to the Corporation of Harwich, to set up over the town-gate. The Corporation accepted the gift and employed their clerk to write a letter of thanks. The language of this letter ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... in fact, 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 the ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne

... existence. This patent article Mr. Terry introduced, was called the Pillar Scroll Top Case. The pillars were about twenty-one inches long, three-quarters of an inch at the base, and three-eights at the top—resting on a square base, and the top finished by a handsome cap. It had a large dial eleven inches square, and tablet below the dial seven by eleven inches. This style of clock was liked very much and was made in large quantities, and for several years. Mr. Terry sold a right to manufacture them to Seth ...
— History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, - and Life of Chauncey Jerome • Chauncey Jerome

... 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 may ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... one thought to set up a rod and mark the places where the shadow fell at sunrise, at sunset, and at midday. The space in between was divided for the hours. This was called a sun dial and was the first instrument ever made for ...
— Uncle Robert's Geography (Uncle Robert's Visit, V.3) • Francis W. Parker and Nellie Lathrop Helm

... be skimming around and round the world at the speed of an express aeroplane. Like a clock whose regulation is out of order, the hour-hand of her life seemed to be racing the minute-hand, and the minute-hand to be covering the face of the dial in sixty seconds or less, returning incessantly to the same well-known figures, pausing awhile, then jerking away again at an insane rate. From time to time the haze over the mind began to clear; and Asako seemed to look down upon the scene ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... VII.'s Chapel, a temple cut like a cameo. Look at the shining oaken stalls of the knights. See the banners overhead. There is no such speaking record of the lapse of time as these banners,—there is one of them beginning to drop to pieces; the long day of a century has decay for its dial-shadow. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various

... promise. A cloudless sky bent over a crystal earth. The mystic peace of Christmas seemed to have been breathed even into bleak December; for the air was mild and still, and the shadow of many a slender tree crept across the snow as steadily as that made by the sun-dial on the lawn. ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... exchange, it should on that account, if on no other, have value in exchange itself, as a measure of length must necessarily have length itself. (We measure time on a clock by means of the revolution of the hands on the dial.) Again, value in exchange supposes value in use. The so-called "money of account," such as the East Indian lac de roupies, the Portuguese reis, and the earlier English pound sterling are no imaginary magnitudes, which would disappear with the figures of our system ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... 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 ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... was born in 1878; reckoning by tens, '88, '98, '08—well, call it forty. He is burly, ruddy, gray-haired, and fond of corncob pipes, dark beer, and sausages. He looks a careful blend of Falstaff and Napoleon III. He has conducted the Sun Dial in the New York Evening Sun since 1912. He stands out as one of the most penetrating satirists and resonant scoffers at folderol that this continent nourishes. He is far more than a colyumist: he is a poet—a kind of Meredithian Prometheus chained to the roar and clank of a ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley

... mechanical laws of nature. Thus, for instance, it cannot be denied that God, or the Intelligence that sustains and rules the ordinary course of things, might if He were minded to produce a miracle, cause all the motions on the dial-plate of a watch, though nobody had ever made the movements and put them in it: but yet, if He will act agreeably to the rules of mechanism, by Him for wise ends established and maintained in the creation, it is necessary that those actions of the watchmaker, whereby he makes ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley

... 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 it ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren

... their respective graduated arcs; and simultaneously with the registration by the pressure gauge of a pressure of six pounds—which indicated the air-pressure in the air-chambers of the ship—the other dial registered zero, thus indicating that the partial exhaustion of the air in the air-chambers had rendered the ship so buoyant that she was now deprived of weight and was upon the point of floating upward, balloon-like, in the air. Another moment, and the incredible was happening; the ship ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... truth and liberty would have been still more desperate. Nevertheless they were directed and controlled, under Providence, by humbler, but more powerful agencies than their own. The nobles were but the gilded hands on the outside of the dial—the hour to strike was determined by the obscure but weighty ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... one finds, in strictness, almost nothing of the same rank. Goethe alone, since the days of Shakespeare, reminds me of it. Of him too you say that he saw the object; you may say what he himself says of Shakespeare: 'His characters are like watches with dial-plates of transparent crystal; they show you the hour like others, and the inward mechanism also ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... composed of a table and a wooden tabernacle. It was shaped like a little house surmounted by a cross and encircled, under the pediment, by the dial-like figure of the tetragram. He brought the silver chalice, the unleavened bread and the wine. He donned his sacerdotal habits, put on his finger the ring which has received the supreme benedictions, then he began to ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans

... had twisted a dial and gotten another view on the left hand screen, this time from close to the target. That camera was radar-controlled; it had fastened onto the approaching missile, which was still invisible. The ...
— The Answer • Henry Beam Piper

... a plane at right angles to it. At the end of these arms hemispherical cups were screwed. These were caught by the wind and the arms revolved at a speed varying with the force of the wind. The speed of the wind could be read off on a dial ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton

... Winters cold Have from the forests shook three Summers' pride; Three beauteous springs to yellow Autumn turn'd In process of the seasons have I seen, Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'd, Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green. Ah! 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 may be deceived: For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred: Ere you were born was beauty's ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... for me to do but watch Sandoval as Kennedy prepared a little instrument with a scale and dial upon which rested an indicator resembling a watch hand, something like the new horizontal clocks which have only one hand to register seconds, minutes, and hours. In them, like a thermometer held sidewise, the hand moves along from zero to twenty-four. In this ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve

... at the clock, and counted from its dial the hours until morning. She wished that the sun would never rise; that some unexpected thing would snatch her from the hut before the night-shades disappeared into the dawn. Cronk moved, and the girl turned with a startled face. How timid she had grown of late! She remembered distinctly ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White

... men picturing the evils of the factory system. Comparisons were made between the old and the new, in which the hideousness of the new was etched in biting phrase. Some tried to turn the dial backward and revive the cottage industries, as did Ruskin a little later. "A Dream of John Ball" was anticipated, and many sighed for "the good ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... man down from the black rohorse, dragged him inside, and propped him against the rec-hall bar. Then he got the man's helmet and spear and laid them beside him. After considerable reflection, he went into the control room, set the time-dial for June 10, 1964, the space-dial for a busy intersection in downtown Los Angeles, and punched out H-O-T-D-O-G S-T-A-N-D on the lumillusion panel. Satisfied, he went into the generator room and short-circuited ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young

... that it gets into motion every day for twenty minutes, and stops. By a system of cogs and levers the motor propels a fine steel needle straight through the five feet of books. A glance at this brass dial shows at once how far the needle point has reached. At the present moment, for instance, it is halfway through the front cover of the 'Journal of John Woolman.' And while the dial is recording the distance covered on the five-foot shelf, the blue liquid in this glass tube measures ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky

... ball, and the right arm dropped over the knee as they bent down from their thrones; they moved not a limb or feature, save the finger of the right hand, which ever and anon moved slowly, pointing, and regulated the fates of men as the hand of the dial speaks ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham

... thrill about the persistent ringing of the alarm clock the next morning and Jack turned over with a groan. The dial said five o'clock, though he was sure he had not been asleep longer ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence

... courtyard with the surrounding 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. ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly

... with broad sunlight lies the hill, And, minuting the long day's loss, The cedar's shadow, slow and still, Creeps o'er its dial of ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... depress the centre of this cover through the device of partially exhausting the box of air and thus diminishing the internal resistance. To the slightly moving middle part of the cover is affixed a lever which actuates, after some intermediate action, the hand which moves on the dial to indicate, by its record of variations in the weight of the atmosphere, what the prospect of the ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland

... the approaching hour, as it came on in regular rotation. Her time-piece was ours, the sun. By night it must have been her guardian star; for frequently she gazed up at a particular section of the heavens, like one regarding the dial in ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... was charmed by the picturesque scene below. Here was a real old herbal garden, gay with flowers and intersected by tiled moss-grown paths. There were bushes exhibiting fantastic examples of the topiary art, and here, too, was a sun-dial. My first impression of this beautiful spot was one of delight. Later I was to regard that enchanted demesne with something akin to horror; but as we stood there watching a gardener clipping the bushes I thought that although Cray's ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer

... and, crouching down to steady himself, for the cutter was beginning to roll heavily, he pulled out his watch, and in the gray light inspected the dial. ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer

... Washington and Jefferson!—greet 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 from them, will not be hot to affirm the perpetuity of republican institutions ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... stood gazing up at the tower, the clock struck twelve with a very deep intonation, and immediately some chimes began to play, and kept up their resounding music for five minutes, as measured by the hand upon the dial. It was a very delightful harmony, as airy as the notes of birds, and seemed a not unbecoming freak of half-sportive fancy in the huge, ancient, and solemn church; although I have seen an old-fashioned parlor-clock that did precisely the same ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... with wide circles Above my kite. And the hills sleep. And a farm house, white as snow, Peeps from green trees—far away. And I watch my kite, For the thin moon will kindle herself ere long, Then she will swing like a pendulum dial To the tail of my kite. A spurt of flame like a water-dragon Dazzles my eyes— I am shaken as ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters

... a 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, and guarded ...
— Tom Swift and His Giant Telescope • Victor Appleton

... and which the writer of my pamphlet ascribes only subordinately to Michel Colomb. The church, which is not of great size, is in the last and most flamboyant phase of Gothic, and in admirable preservation; the west front, before which a quaint old sun-dial is laid out on the ground, - a circle of num- bers marked in stone, like those on a clock face, let into the earth, - is covered with delicate ornament. The great feature, however (the nave is perfectly bare ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... impossible to sit hobnobbing with the jolly little deacon on that bright New Year's morning and not be affected by the happiness of his mood, for he was actually bubbling over with fun and as full of frolic as if the finger on the dial had, in truth, gone back forty years and he was only sixteen. "Only sixteen, parson, ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray

... acceptable service. The eyes and ears of his hearers were anxiously strained, as if to gain some sight or sound which might be converted or wrested into a type of approbation, and ever and anon dark looks were turned on the dial-plate of the time-piece, to watch its progress towards ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... servants, that he has no shadow; and we should think he shouldn't, because our ghosts hereaway have none that ever I heard of. But that's a lie of their foolish religion; for I could swear I one night saw his shadow flit like that of a sun-dial, when the sun's in a hurry to get the curtains round his head, away past the east end of the house, and disappear in a moment. But I'll tell you what, Aminadab, he may, like our spirits, be a shadow himself. I could hardly speak for fear, though five minutes before I had as good ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various

... through the curtains of the great window of the drawing-room overhead, at my lord as he stood regarding the fountain. There was in the court a peculiar silence somehow; and the scene remained long in Esmond's memory:—the sky bright overhead; the buttresses of the building and the sun-dial casting shadow over the gilt memento mori inscribed underneath; the two dogs, a black greyhound and a spaniel nearly white, the one with his face up to the sun, and the other snuffing amongst the grass and stones, and my lord leaning over the fountain, which was bubbling audibly. ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... balance-wheel, for their mover and regulator. The strokes are made by a small hammer. He then showed me his last, which is moved by a weight and regulated by a pendulum, and which cost only-two guineas and a half. It presents, in front, a dial-plate like that of a clock, on which are arranged, in a circle, the words largo, adagio, andante, allegro, presto. The circle is moreover divided into fifty-two equal degrees. Largo is at 1, adagio at 11, andante at 22, allegro at 36, and presto at 46. Turning ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... had a rainbow-coloured mass hovering over it. Bees full of industry flew abroad, and glittering beetles crawled along the moist grass, then crows, chattering paroquets, and long-legged cranes took to the wing, while the jungle-cock, the dial-bird, the yellow oriole, the grass warbler, and bronze-winged pigeons sent their varied and ringing notes through the forest. Then as the sun arose, the bulbul and the sun-birds were seen quivering in thousands over the nectar-giving flowers of the field. As the heat increased ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... not years; in thought, not breaths; In feelings, not in figures on a dial. We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives, Who thinks most, feels the ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various

... all but one anonymous and complimentary, and very anxious for my conversion from certain infidelities into which my good-natured correspondents conceive me to have fallen. The books were presents of a convertible kind. Also, 'Christian Knowledge' and the 'Bioscope,' a religious Dial of Life explained;—and to the author of the former (Cadell, publisher,) I beg you will forward my best thanks for his letter, his present, and, above all, his good intentions. The 'Bioscope' contained a MS. copy of very excellent verses, from whom I know not, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... sound-proof room.) One set Arabian 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 ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer

... so lonely. She was sorry when they left that open hill country and came into a more fertile scene, a high road, which was like an avenue in a gentleman's park, and then the village duck-pond and red homestead, the old gray church, with its gilded sun-dial, marking the hour of six, the gardens brimming over with roses, and as full of sweet odours as those spicy islands which send their perfumed breath to greet the seaman as he sails to the ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... of the Stabian baths, we should mention that under the portico, near the entrance to the men's baths, was found a sun-dial, consisting as usual of a half circle inscribed in a rectangle, and with the gnomon in perfect preservation. It was supported by lion's feet and elegantly ornamented. On its base was an Oscan inscription, which has been interpreted ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... stopt from its usual current in one place, it naturally sought a vent in another. Mrs Tow-wouse is thought to have perceived this abatement, and, probably, it added very little to the natural sweetness of her temper; for though she was as true to her husband as the dial to the sun, she was rather more desirous of being shone on, as being more capable ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding

... shadow upon the pewter dial two hours beyond the meridian line. Great cream colored heads of thunder-clouds are lifting above the sharp, clear line of the western horizon; the light breeze dies away, and the air becomes stifling, ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell

... read the meter. Directions how to do this will therefore be found useful. A gas-meter has three dials marking tip to 100,000 feet, 10,000 feet, and 1,000 feet respectively. The figures on the second dial are arranged in opposite order from those on the first and third dials, and this often leads to an error in reckoning. However, there should be no trouble in setting down the figures indicated by the pointer on each dial. We first set down the figure ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller

... far the expression of her features told you truth; but it also told you more than that, which you must needs believe, though it was not the fact. Her face was not the index of her mind in all respects; it was rather like the exquisite and costly dial-plate of a time-piece the works of which are indifferent. Her air was spiritual; her voice thrilled your being with its sweet tone; her eyes were full of earnest tenderness; but she was weak of purpose, ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn

... instant the tools in Jimmie Dale's hands disappeared into their respective pockets beneath his vest—and the sensitive fingers shot to the dial on the safe. ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... Maitre Voigt. "Not 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 you ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins

... on the sun-dial, blue upon its white-marble surface, marked four o'clock, but its edge was broken by the irregular silhouette of an encroaching rose-bush. The sun-dial in the midst of the wide, sunny garden, the old red-brick house among the elms—these were the most sharply defined elements ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... more of God, he that can be a blessing to the community in which he lives to-night will be great anywhere, but he who cannot be a blessing where he now lives will never be great anywhere on the face of God's earth. "We live in deeds, not years, in feeling, not in figures on a dial; in thoughts, not breaths; we should count time by heart throbs, in the cause of right." Bailey says: "He ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... the present stage of our literary development, discouragement will prove a very easy and fatal thing. The typical point of view of the European critic, when justified, is adequately reflected in an article by Mary M. Colum, which was published in the Dial last spring: "Those of us who take an interest in literary history will remember how particular literary forms at times seize hold of a country: in Elizabethan England, it was the verse drama; in the eighteenth century, it was the essay; in Scandinavia of a generation ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... of Woody Ledge, and at sunset it lay like a fallen mast athwart the cow-paths, its long top arm a flying pennant on the side of Bowman's Hill. In summer this bar of shadow moved like a clock-hand on the green dial of the pasture, and the help could tell the time by the slant of it. Lone Pine had a mighty girth at the bottom, and its bare body tapered into the sky as straight as an arrow. Uncle Eb used to say that its one long, naked branch that ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller

... be a favorite seems to us a safe prediction.... There is no part of it which, once begun, is likely to be left unread."—The Dial. ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... presently to talk of the quarry-workers and their families, their 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 dark hair so well, and he divined that she had put it on ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther

... for a closer inspection of the safe, and, as his flashlight played over the single dial, he shook his head whimsically. No, it would be hardly true to call that modern; it was only an ancient monstrosity, a helpless thing at the mercy of ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... shines a fire may be started by means of a small pocket sun or magnifying glass. Fine scrapings from dry wood or "punk tinder" will easily ignite by the focusing of the sun dial upon it, and by fanning the fire and by adding additional fuel, the fire-builder will soon ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson

... 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 shall I ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 20, 1891 • Various

... engravings upon the walls, representing American historical scenes, and especially an admirable portrait of Washington. An ancient observatory was of more than ordinary interest to us, erected by a famous Hindoo patron of science, Rajah Manu. Though now quite neglected and in partial ruins, a sun-dial, a zodiac, meridian line, and astronomical appliances are still distinctly traced upon heavy stones, arranged for celestial observations. This proves that astronomy was well advanced at Benares hundreds ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. His note-books impair his memory; his libraries overload his wit; the insurance-office increases the number of accidents; and it may be a question whether machinery does not encumber; whether we have not lost by refinement some energy, by a Christianity entrenched in establishments ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... bright were the wheels, that told Of the lapse of time, as they moved round slow; And the hands, as they swept o'er the dial of gold, Seemed to point to the girl below. And lo! she had changed: in a few short hours Her bouquet had become a garland of flowers, That she held in her outstretched hands, and flung This way and that, as she, dancing, swung In the fulness of grace and of womanly pride, That told me she soon was ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... 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 ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... 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 ...
— The Charm of Oxford • J. Wells

... the doctors come near him, and when Malcolm entered there was no one in the room but Mrs. Courthope. The shadow had crept far along the dial. His face had grown ghastly, the skin had sunk to the bones, and his eyes stood out as if from much staring into the dark. They rested very mournfully on Malcolm for a few ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various

... dial; without the light he was wholly at a loss. But a breath later her skirts rustled near him; the slide of the bull's-eye was jerked back, and a circle of illumination thrown upon the lock. He bent his head again, pretending to listen ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance

... and 13 if they appear in the UHF indicator dial of your unit. These are VHF channels to be tuned in ...
— Zenith Television Receiver Operating Manual • Zenith Radio Corporation

... dark for them to see the statue of Minerva on the peak of the high gable and the sun-dial on its face with the circle of animals, but the lighted windows on the ground-floor and in the first story gave ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... of the great clock moves so immeasurably slow that it is impossible to note it. The experience of the individual, nay, of recorded history,—if we can say there is any such thing,—fails to trace the movement of the index on the huge dial. If there be this progress for the race collectively, it must be accomplished in a cycle vast as those of the geological eras;—a deposit of a millionth of an inch of knowledge and virtue over the whole race in fifty million years or so! Mr. Newman is pleased to say, "Some nations sink, while others ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

... to the girl, passed with exceeding slowness. She watched the hands of a clock on a shelf in the room drag themselves across the face of the dial, and twice she walked in front of the shelf and peered intently at the clock, to be certain ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer

... believed I was going to write in this book was to be devoted to inscriptions. I have always loved the art of the epigraphists, and I wanted to quote some examples, including (1) an inscription for a sun-dial, (2) an inscription for a memorial to Lord Halifax, the trimmer, the greatest of Whig statesmen, (3) another to William Pitt, and (4) an inscription to the Quakers who fought and died in the War,—men whose noble combination of patriotism and self- ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... 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, ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad

... it up to the window, as if he might hope to discover something from the water-mark; but there was nothing in either of these places of a nature calculated to set his troubled mind at rest. Then he took a magnificent repeater watch from his waistcoat pocket and glanced at the dial; the hands stood at half-past seven. He immediately threw the letter on the table, and as he did so his anxiety found relief ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby

... headed from our rooms toward the laboratory, where Kennedy had apparatus to meet almost any conceivable emergency. From a shelf in the corner he took down an oblong oak box, perhaps eighteen inches in length, in the front of which was set a circular metal disk with a sort of pointer and dial. He lifted the lid of the box, and inside I could see two shiny caps which in turn he lifted, disclosing what looked like two good-sized spools of wire. Apparently satisfied with his scrutiny, he snapped the lid shut and wrapped up the box carefully, consigning it to my care, ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve

... Such conduct, you say, will not be allowed in the commonwealth. Idleness and slovenly, careless work will be forbidden? Ah! then you must mean that beside the worker will be the overseer with the whip; the time-clock will mark his energy upon its dial; the machine will register his effort; and if he will not work there is lurking for him in the background the shadowed door of the prison. Exactly and logically so. Socialism, in other ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock

... which lay placid and motionless under the crimson rays of the setting sun; with the forest-trees lying straight along each side, and their deep-green foliage mirrored to blackness in the burnished surface of the moat below—and the broken sun-dial at the end nearest the hall—and the heron, standing on one leg at the water's edge, lazily looking down for fish—the lonely and desolate house scarce needed the broken windows, the weeds on the door-sill, the broken shutter softly flapping ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... as they were parting at the house of a mutual friend, where her office was in Boston, she replied, "Oh! look in the directory for it"; instead of politely giving him the street and number. Thus she lost a pleasant acquaintance and a subscriber to "The Dial." Hawthorne and his wife had not been four days in Concord before she came to them with a proposition that they should take Ellery Channing and his wife, who was her own sister, into their family as boarders. One cannot help some astonishment at this proceeding, ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns

... water that the apparatus, in descending, would cause the propeller to make one revolution for every fathom of perpendicular descent, hands provided with the power of self-registering were attached to a dial, and the instrument was complete. It worked beautifully in moderate depths, but failed in blue water, from the difficulty of hauling it up if the line used were small, and from the difficulty of getting it down if the line used were large enough ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne



Words linked to "Dial" :   take, finger hole, telephony, dial telephone, horologe, selector, pick out, controller, telephone, choose, indicator, timekeeper



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