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Hourglass   Listen
noun
Hourglass  n.  An instrument for measuring time, especially the interval of an hour. It consists of a glass vessel having two compartments, from the uppermost of which a quantity of sand, water, or mercury occupies an hour in running through a small aperture unto the lower. Note: A similar instrument measuring any other interval of time takes its name from the interval measured; as, a half-hour glass, a half-minute glass. A three-minute glass is sometimes called an egg-glass, from being used to time the boiling of eggs.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Hourglass" Quotes from Famous Books



... the boys from playing and the grown people from going to sleep, the tithingman must turn the hourglass. In those days very few people could afford clocks, but every one had an hourglass. It took the fine sand just one hour to pour from the upper part of the glass ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate

... Devil," is an engraving on copper. The stern, intelligent men of the time, who were ready to face any danger in order to bear themselves according to their notions of right, are well represented in this splendid mounted knight. What though Death reminds him by the uplifted hourglass that his life is nearly ended? or that Satan himself stands ready to claim the Knight's soul? There is that in this grand horseman's face that tells of unflinching purpose and indomitable courage to carry it out against the odds ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor

... that would have astonished a cool English spectator. Every morning her first question to Sister Frances was—"Will she come to-day?"—If Mad. de Fleury was expected, the hours and the minutes were counted, and the sand in the hourglass that stood on the school-room table was frequently shaken. The moment she appeared, Victoire ran to her, and was silent; satisfied with standing close beside her, holding her gown when unperceived, and watching, as she spoke and moved, every turn of her countenance. Delighted by these marks of ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

... to the last point of analogy which Professor Draper gives between individual and national life—nations, like individuals, die. Empires are only sandhills in the hourglass of Time; they crumble spontaneously away by the process ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... which strikes one of the quarter hours. Beside the ordinary clock dial you will see a moving figure that strikes with its scepter the first note of each quarter hour, while at the same time a figure opposite it turns an hourglass to mark the complete ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett

... he urged, I have not heard; His reasons could not well be stronger: So Death the poor delinquent spared, And left to live a little longer. Yet, calling up a serious look, His hourglass trembled while he spoke: "Neighbor," he said, "farewell! no more Shall Death disturb your mirthful hour; And further, to avoid all blame Of cruelty upon my name, To give you time for preparation, And fit you for ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... five-inch glass, Mars shows three peculiarities that may be called fairly conspicuous—viz., its white polar cap, its general reddish, or orange-yellow, hue, and its dark markings, one of the clearest of which is the so-called Syrtis Major, or, as it was once named on account of its shape, "Hourglass Sea." Other dark expanses in the southern hemisphere are not difficult to be seen, although their outlines are more or less misty and indistinct. The gradual diminution of the polar cap, which certainly behaves in this respect as a mass of snow and ice would do, is a most interesting ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss

... hold rather stereotypical notions about what constitutes an attractive person; usually it involves having some meat on ones bones. Hollywood and Hugh Hefner have both influenced the masses to think that women should have hourglass figures with large, upthrust, firm breasts. Since breasts are almost all useless fatty tissue supporting some milk-producing glands that do not give a breast much volume except when engorged, most women fasters loose a good percentage ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon

... sermon down to four hours, and the sexton up-ended the hourglass each hour. Boys who went to sleep in church were sand-bagged, and grew up to be ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... man was the tithingman in the pursuit of his duties. He was on the watch all the time, and, as suspicion breeds suspicion, so the children were on the watch for him. The sermons were long, the hourglass was sometimes twice turned during the service, and the children often kept themselves awake by looking out for the tithingman, who was watching out for them. This was hardly the modern idea of heart culture and spiritual development, ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth

... burning on the table beside her. Near it was a skull, and near this emblem of mortality an hourglass, running fast. ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... the God of Battles as an inditement on the landscape never to be erased by any human court—lonely, solemn, desolate, bereaved of any summer flower, written all over with the purple shadows of an endless Miserere. Thirty-six years have run through the hourglass since these dreary hills and the flowing river listened to the furious speech of rifles and the warwhoop of desperate redmen. The snows have piled high the parchment of winter—a shroud for the deathless dead—whiter than the white ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon

... the high, the perilous years, Upon the brink of mighty things we stand— Of golden harvests and of silver tears, And griefs and pleasures that like grains of sand Gleam in the hourglass, yield ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter

... change came o'er the spirit of my dream," and endless processions of watchmen moved along, each mournfully dinning in my ears, "Past four o'clock." At length I was attacked by night-mare. Methought I was an hourglass—old Father Time bestrode me—he pressed upon me with unendurable weight—fearfully and threateningly did wave his scythe above my head—he grinned at me, struck three blows, audible blows, with the handle of his scythe, on my breast, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 471, Saturday, January 15, 1831 • Various

... petite quickness rather than a diminutive quality that earned the appellation. Even when he had wooed her in Granite City, Missouri, and she had sung down at the quiet-faced youth from a choir loft, she was after the then prevalent form of hourglass girlish loveliness. Now she was rather enormous of bust, proudly so, and wore her waist pulled in so that her hips sprang out roundly. A common gesture was to place her hands on her hips, press down, and breathe sharply inward, thus holding herself for the moment from the steel walls of her ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... bald and uncovered, but long white whiskers grew down to his waist. About his body was thrown a loose robe of fine white linen. In one hand he bore a great scythe, and beneath the other arm he carried an hourglass. ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum

... the richest in popular numbers, containing an aria for alto, Lazarillo's song ("Alas! those Chimes so sweetly pealing"); a charming trio for Don Caesar, Lazarillo, and Don Jose ("Turn on, old Time, thine Hourglass"); Don Caesar's stirring martial song, "Yes, let me like a Soldier fall;" the serious ballad, "In happy Moments, Day by Day," written by Alfred Bunn, who wrote so many of the Balfe ballads; and the quartet and chorus closing the scene, "Health to ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton

... life was but lent at first, and that the remainder is more than you have reason to expect, and consequently ought to be managed with more than ordinary diligence. A wise man spends every day as if it were his last; his hourglass is always in his hand, and he is never ...
— Dickory Cronke - The Dumb Philosopher, or, Great Britain's Wonder • Daniel Defoe

... the hourglass on the pulpit). I heard a great voice from the temple saying Unto the Seven Angels, Go your ways; Pour out the vials of the wrath of God Upon the earth. And the First Angel went And poured his vial on the earth; and straight There fell a noisome and a grievous sore On them which had the birth-mark ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow



Words linked to "Hourglass" :   sandglass



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