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Perpendicular   Listen
adjective
Perpendicular  adj.  
1.
Exactly upright or vertical; pointing to the zenith; at right angles to the plane of the horizon; extending in a right line from any point toward the center of the earth.
2.
(Geom.) At right angles to a given line or surface; as, the line ad is perpendicular to the line bc.
Perpendicular style (Arch.), a name given to the latest variety of English Gothic architecture, which prevailed from the close of the 14th century to the early part of the 16th; probably so called from the vertical style of its window mullions.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Perpendicular" Quotes from Famous Books



... Street against the wall which defends it from the sea. Beyond the sea-wall there curves for miles in a vast and regular sweep the barren beach of shingle, with the village of Brenzett standing out darkly across the water, a spire in a clump of trees; and still further out the perpendicular column of a lighthouse, looking in the distance no bigger than a lead pencil, marks the vanishing-point of the land. The country at the back of Brenzett is low and flat, but the bay is fairly well ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad

... The trail, almost perpendicular now, led up a mighty rock. She pulled herself up, and emerging upon the crown of the mountain, beheld the proud peaks of the Rockies, bare or snow-capped, dripping with purple and gray mists, sweeping majestically into the distance. Such solemnity, such dark and passionate beauty, she never yet ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie

... orbit, or the path described by it in its annual revolution about the sun, is, so to speak, a flattened circle, somewhat elongated, called an ellipse. The axis of the earth is not perpendicular to the plane of the orbit, which is an imaginary flat surface enclosed by the line of the earth's revolution, but is inclined to it at an angle of 23 deg. 28', which angle is called the obliquity of the ecliptic. The ecliptic is the path or way among ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu

... that event when Cutty arrived there would be no Kitty Conover. Something that would sound unusual to Cutty and accidental to Karlov. She hit upon it. She seized a plank from her barricade, raised it to a perpendicular position, then flung it down violently. Would Cutty hear and comprehend that she was warning him? As a matter of fact, Cutty never heard the crash, for at that particular minute he was standing up to get the kinks out of ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath

... transformation in death, the recapitulation of existences which the tomb contains, the incomprehensible grafting of successive loves on the persistent I, the essence, the substance, the Nile, and the Ens, the soul, nature, liberty, necessity; perpendicular problems, sinister obscurities, where lean the gigantic archangels of the human mind; formidable abysses, which Lucretius, Manou, Saint Paul, Dante, contemplate with eyes flashing lightning, which seems by its steady gaze on the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... development of Gothic architecture in this period, the Decorated giving place to the Perpendicular. The latter derives its name from the perpendicular divisions of the lights in the arches of the windows. It marks the final period of the Gothic or Pointed style, and is noted for the exquisite carved work of its ceilings. King's College Chapel, Cambridge, St. George's Chapel, Windsor, and ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... is, that the perpendicular lines of the nose and temples form the letter M, and the eyes the two O's. The enthusiast for Roman domination must have been delighted to find that Nature ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt

... hurried with him to the scene of operations. There he explained everything and showed me how, by digging away a portion of the face of the bluff, he had found that this vast fragment of the glacier, which had been so miraculously preserved, ended in an irregularly perpendicular wall, which extended downward he knew not how far, and the edge of it on its upper side had been touched by my workmen in digging their pit. "It was the gradual melting of the upper end of this ...
— My Terminal Moraine - 1892 • Frank E. Stockton

... Deegan made it his business to see that they did. I realized presently that my special forte lay in directing a sizable garden like that rather than in performing the actual labor, especially when June arrived and the sun began to approach the perpendicular and take on callithump. You probably don't know what callithump is, but you will find out if you undertake to hoe sod-ground potatoes in July. It has something to do with ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine

... I am told, the result not of age and sinking foundations, but of design. When they were built, very many years ago, the city had a law directing that its roofs should so far project beyond the perpendicular as to shed their water into the gutter, thus enabling the passers-by on the pavement to walk unharmed. I cannot give chapter or verse for this comfortable theory; which of course preceded the ingenious ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas

... long level piece of ground on the river's bank, with a perpendicular cliff at the end of it, was selected as the shooting ground, and, on the appointed day, at the appointed hour, the ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne

... The taste and science displayed in its execution do credit to the engineer; and the soil in which it is imbedded, being argillaceous, partially encrusted with strontian, reflects equal honour on his geological attainments. This pump, which you approach by three steps, is perpendicular, and of an elegant appearance; and forms the chief ornament of the "Rents." The handle is of wrought iron, highly polished; the snout copper, studded with hobnails. It is neatly coated with white paint, and bears on its front the following inscription, which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various

... a table. It seemed like some vast structure which had been raised out of the water during the night by some magic power. Ile Haute arose to an extraordinary height, its summit perfectly level, its sides perfectly perpendicular, and its color a dark purple hue. Nor was Cape Chignecto less changed. The rugged cliff arose with magnified proportions to a majestic height, and took upon itself the same sombre color, which pervaded the ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille

... a sort of triangular four? Why, without this inexplicable sign, has the cross a number of cyphers, two, or even three, cross-bars? Why should the tail of the cypher 4 itself be traversed by one or sometimes two perpendicular bars which themselves would appear to form another cross of another kind? Why, among the ornamental accessories, do certain species of stars form several crosses, entangled or isolated? Why, at the base of the cross is the V duplicated?" ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts

... feature of this method of etheric telegraphy, due to Marconi himself, is the suspension of a perpendicular wire at each terminus, its length twenty feet for stations a mile apart, forty feet for four miles, and so on, the telegraphic distance increasing as the square of the length of suspended wire. In the Kingstown regatta, July, 1898, Marconi sent from a yacht under full steam a ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... why the General and the Brigade Major had not returned from their tour of the trenches. Headquarters were situated in Gully Ravine, that prince among ravines on the Peninsula. From my place I could see the gully floor, which was the dry bed of a water-course, winding away between high walls of perpendicular cliffs or steep, scrub-covered slopes, as it pursued its journey, like some colossal trench, towards the firing line. Down the great cleft, while I looked, a horseman came riding rapidly. He was an officer, with a slight open wound in his chin, and he rode ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond

... almost peculiar to the Alps, and to the district between Switzerland and Savoy. The passes over these mountains are exceedingly dangerous from their steepness and narrowness. A precipice of many hundred feet is often found on one side, and perpendicular rocks on the other, while the path is glazed with frozen snow or ice. In many places the path is overhung with huge masses of frozen snow, which occasionally loosen and fall, when the dreadful storms ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... 'I go;' but anon the North-east took and turned him South-west, then the South-west turned him North-east, and so of the other winds; but it was in him to go up straight if the time had been quieter. Your lordship affects the unwavering perpendicular; but His Holiness, pushed one way by the Empire and another by England, if he move at all, Heaven stay him, is fain ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... each patch completely at least twice, at an interval of about one month, hoeing down the weeds with a short-handled hoe; the hoe consists of a flat blade projecting at right angles from the iron haft (Fig. 13). The latter is bent downwards at a right angle just above the blade, in a plane perpendicular to that of the blade, and its other end is prolonged by a short wooden handle, into the end of which it is thrust. The woman stoops to the work, hoeing carefully round each PADI plant, by holding the hoe in the right hand and striking the blade downwards and towards ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... where Snowslides are frequent I prod deep into the snow to ascertain its actual depth, where the snow is thick it is most apt to slide. The cry is keep close to the rocks and you are safe. After many days of severe suffering and fighting cold we came to a perpendicular ridge of ice which we discovered was a long ridge, there seemed to be no way around so we prepared to let over each other. It was about one hundred feet down to the ice. I was the first to test the ...
— Black Beaver - The Trapper • James Campbell Lewis

... letting them go for a few minutes,) came to our rescue. Forbidding as was his aspect, we were very glad to feel a little of his giant power. Of this one I had, of course, a better view than I had had of any other of the species. It had, like the rest, two chimneys in front, like perpendicular tusks, with a ladder between them. The ladder was for the purpose of ascent,—the ascent for the purpose of elevation,—and the elevation for the purpose of "look out." The top of the ladder, in short, rendered the same service as the ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies

... proposed to show us a "short cut," by which we might, to especial advantage, pursue our journey. This proved to be almost perpendicular down a hill, studded with young trees and stumps. From these he proposed, with a hospitality of service worthy an Oriental, to free our wheels whenever they should get entangled, also, to be himself the drag, to prevent our too rapid descent. Such generosity deserved trust; ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller

... unavoidable, and also being aware that such an event would be fatal to both parties, on the instant turned his horses to the near bank, and dashed down into the bed of the Mohawk, a descent of more than a hundred feet, as nearly perpendicular as may well be. His presence of mind and courage saved both his own passengers and those in the other vehicle, with the loss of his coach and one of his horses only. The man was publicly thanked and rewarded, and, I believe, yet waggons the ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power

... out, the one part will cut the other. "7. Describe a square which shall be larger than Belgrave Square. "8. If the gnomon of a sun-dial be divided into two equal, and also into two unequal parts, what would be its value? "9. Describe a perpendicular triangle having the squares of the semi-circle equal to half the extremity between the points of section. "10. If an Austrian florin is worth 5.61 francs, what will be the value of Pennsylvanian bonds? Prove by rule-of-three inverse. "11. If seven horses ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... evening dress stood in their scanty gowns huddled together on one side of the room. They received a cup of tea, but no one noticed them or spoke to them, and they hardly dared to speak among themselves. This, as I was told, was called "doing the perpendicular," and they must have felt much relieved when towards ten o'clock they were allowed to depart, and exchange the perpendicular for a more comfortable position, indulging in songs and pleasant talk, which I ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller

... whose architectural effects were strictly perpendicular, cast a perpetual shadow of disapproval over the life partner whom it had pleased Providence to bestow upon her. Jimmy was a born satirist; he knew things are not what they seem, and he wickedly rejoiced thereat. To his literal, pious-minded ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice

... then proceeded to the old castle,-its ruins rather,- which we most completely examined, not leaving one stone' untrod, except such as must have precipitated us into the sea. This castle is built almost in the sea, upon a perpendicular rock, and its situation, therefore, is nobly bold and striking. It is little more now than walls, and a few little winding staircases at its four ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay

... second, which stood crosswise on the first, in a north and south plane, the Father took for a meridian; but it could be turned round on its axis; a third stood in the meridian plane with its axis perpendicular, and seemed to stand for a vertical circle; but this also could be turned round so as to show any vertical whatever. Moreover all these were graduated, and the degrees marked by prominent studs of iron, so that in the night the graduation could be read by the touch without a ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... bath-house, "erected at enormous trouble and expense" by a handful of T.U. men and myself the day before, soared heavenwards with an acre or two of the surrounding scenery. "Yes," said the Salvage gentleman as he regained his perpendicular, "as I was sayin', 'is size is in 'is favour (you'd better git down ag'in, Corp'l)—'is size is in 'is favour; 'e'll go in a dixie easy, or even in a—(there's another bit orf the church)—even in a tin 'at, if you fold 'im ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various

... it was done they went to the large canoe, and lifting it carried it away to the place Luka had found—a ridge of rock running back at a right angle from the shore, with a perpendicular face some twelve feet high. At one point there was a deep cleft in it, some eight feet wide at the mouth ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty

... having left the snow some hours, he began to lead his horse down a wooded precipice, through vegetation which grew more luxuriant every yard he descended. The glen, whose bottom he was trying to reach, was a black profound gulf, with perpendicular, or rather over-hanging walls, on every side, save where he was scrambling down. Here indeed it was possible for a horse to keep his footing among the belts of trees, that, alternating with precipitous granite cliff, formed the upper end of one of the most tremendous glens in the world—the Gates ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... shadow. The shadow lines ought to be generally parallel, but with enough variation to obviate a mechanical effect. They need not be vertical lines,—in fact it is better that they should take the same slant as the light. If they are not absolutely perpendicular, however, it is well to make them distinctly oblique, otherwise the effect will be unpleasant. A clever sketch of a cornice by Mr. George F. Newton is shown in Fig. 42. Notice how well the texture of the brick is expressed by the looseness ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis

... the millions upon millions of years that had been required for this stratum and that—he liked to amaze himself with the sounding figures. I remember him expressing a wish to see the Grand Canon of Arizona, where, on perpendicular walls six thousand feet high, the long story of geological creation is written. I had stopped there during my Western trip of the previous year, and I told him something of its wonders. I urged him to see them for himself, offering to go ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... tension is above the ultimate stress for the concrete, failure of the concrete will then occur on planes perpendicular to the line of maximum tension, approximately 45 deg. at the end of the beam. If the stirrups are spaced close enough, however, and are of sufficient strength so that these planes of failure all cut enough steel to take ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey

... vertical hand is one in which the tops and tails of letters form as nearly as possible a perpendicular with the horizontal line. The best example of this class of handwriting is that known as the Civil Service hand, familiar to the general public through telegrams and ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn

... another, even more obviously convenient than the first. She had no side-saddle, and it was very apparent that a firm seat upon the smooth leather beneath her was unattainable sideways. Springing to her accustomed perpendicular like a bowed sapling, and satisfying herself that nobody was in sight, she seated herself in the manner demanded by the saddle, though hardly expected of the woman, and trotted off in the direction of ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... notice that along the coast, between Cape de la Heve and the town of Ault (a space of 67 miles), the wind, when it blows in a direction perpendicular, or nearly so, to the direction of the coast, is reflected by the high cliffs, neutralizing in great measure its original action to a certain extent in the offing, depending upon the strength of the wind. It follows from this, that ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor

... sleet, that we did not see an island of ice, which we were steering directly for, till we were less than a mile from it. I judged it to be about 50 feet high, and half a mile in circuit. It was flat at top, and its sides rose in a perpendicular direction, against which the sea broke exceedingly high. Captain Furneaux at first took this ice for land, and hauled off from it, until called back by signal. As the weather was foggy, it was necessary to proceed with caution. We therefore reefed our top-sails, ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook

... most remarkable gorge in the world, in the centre of California, 140 m. E. of San Francisco, 6 m. long and from 1/2 to 24 m. broad, girt by perpendicular walls thousands of feet deep and traversed by the river Merced in a succession of falls of great height, the whole presenting a scene of mingled grandeur and beauty; it was discovered in 1851, and steps are ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... the same country we are in this year, I came to the little village of Benouville, on the Falaise, between Yport and Etretat. I came from Fecamp, following the coast, a high coast, perpendicular as a wall, with projecting and rugged rocks falling sheer down into the sea. I had walked since the morning on the close clipped grass, as smooth and as yielding as a carpet. Singing lustily, I walked with long strides, looking sometimes at the slow and lazy flight of a gull, with ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant

... helpless, I realised that the creature was beginning to ascend my legs, to climb my body. Even then what it was I could not tell,—it mounted me, apparently, with as much ease as if I had been horizontal instead of perpendicular. It was as though it were some gigantic spider,—a spider of the nightmares; a monstrous conception of some dreadful vision. It pressed lightly against my clothing with what might, for all the world, have been spider's legs. There was an amazing host of them,—I felt the pressure of each separate ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh

... their jobs knew that, and did not order me out of their way. This was Billingsgate, and there was a tide to be caught. They hustled me out of it. But the skipper had to be found, for I must know when I had to come aboard. A perpendicular iron ladder led to her saloon from a hatch, and through unintelligence and the dark I entered that saloon more precipitously than was a measure of my eagerness, picked myself up with a coolness which I can only hope met with the approval of some silent men, watching me, who ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson

... currents of air, and stand unshrinking at the verge of almost unfathomable ravines. But it is not so with the horse: fleet on the plain, careful over rugged ground, he is timid and uncertain on the hill-side, and the risk incurred by Luke and Turpin, in their descent of the almost perpendicular sides of the cliff, was tremendous. Peter watched them in their descent with some admiration, and with ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... philosophers, there is no bigness or littleness to you. This stone is just as interesting to you, or ought to be—as if it was a million times as big. There is no more sublimity—per se—in ground sloped at an angle of forty-five, than in ground level; nor in a perpendicular fracture of a rock, than in a horizontal one. The only thing that makes the one more interesting to you in a landscape than the other, is that you could tumble over the perpendicular fracture—and couldn't tumble over the other. A cloud, looked at ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin

... two perpendicular lines drawn through the S, making the brand Circle Dollar-mark. That's a most ingenious thing. It has been done with a running iron. The fellow who stole our cattle has just changed it by running a curved hot iron through ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor

... of them up a long slanting mound ending in a sharp declivity, with a hole for the foot of the stone at its base. If the stone were now tipped over, it would slide into its place, and could be easily raised from its slanting position to the perpendicular. Then filling in the space between the mound and two contiguous stones, the impost could be dragged up to its position. I found a pleasure in working at this simple mechanical problem, as a change from the more imaginative thoughts suggested by the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... 80) is the finest canvas stitch, and is therefore suitable for work involving much detail. Pictorial and heraldic subjects are frequently carried out in it. It is worked diagonally over a perpendicular and horizontal thread of the canvas. The diagram shows the method of working both back and front. It will be noticed that though the line goes alternately from left to right and from right to left, the stitch is always the same at the back ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie

... they must not be held as a pen or pencil, but perfectly perpendicular. Commence a short distance from the lower end of the petals—for where the paint is applied the wax will not adhere. When the petal is all one colour, pass the brush from you quickly and lightly off the same on to the paper. If it is a variegated petal, bring ...
— The Royal Guide to Wax Flower Modelling • Emma Peachey

... dictated the white-bearded one for his Introduction, "let us think of the subplanes of the astral plane as horizontal divisions, and of the types of matter belonging to the seven great planetary Logoi as perpendicular divisions crossing ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson

... spheroidical, it has but one axis on which it can revolve in equilibrio. Suppose the axis of the earth to shift forty-five degrees; then cut it into one hundred and eighty slices, making every section in the plane of a circle of latitude, perpendicular to the axis: every one of these slices, except the equatorial one, would be unbalanced, as there would be more matter on one side of its axis than on the other. There could be but one diameter drawn through such a slice, which would divide it into ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson

... door, clapped his hat on his head, drove her up against the chimney, and holding her head between his two fists, said he knew no reason why he should not pound it into a jelly, in order to teach her to call him poltroon again. The poor woman was horribly frightened, and made perpendicular curtseys between his two fists, and all sorts of excuses. At last he let her go, more dead than alive. She had the generosity to say no syllable of this occurrence until after his death; she even allowed him to come to the house ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... the others in having four axes, three of them equal and in one plane and all at 120 deg. to each other; the fourth axis is not always equal to these three. It may be, and often is, longer or shorter. It passes through the intersecting point of the three others, and is perpendicular or at ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin

... the corner-stones by the residents. As the dust-carts could not pass through, the inhabitants trusted to storms to wash their always miry alley; for how could it be clean? When the summer sun shed its perpendicular rays on Paris like a sheet of gold, but as piercing as the point of a sword, it lighted up the blackness of this street for a few minutes without drying the permanent damp that rose from the ground-floor to the first story of these dark and ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac

... where his brother was to rest in peace, with all the suffering at an end. There were big, mossy pieces of granite there, which would cover and protect the poor fellow's resting-place, and a smooth, perpendicular face of rock above, on which he saw himself, chipping out with hammer and cold ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn

... as in the neighbourhood of Newlands, is little broken, the whole covering being soft and downy pasturage. In other places rocks predominate; the soil is laid bare by torrents and burstings of water from the sides of the mountains in heavy rains; and not unfrequently their perpendicular sides are seamed by ravines (formed also by rains and torrents) which, meeting in angular points, entrench and scar the surface with numerous figures like the letters W. ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... incriminating costume. So I found safety in numbers. Even the servants who had seen me disappear through the window, though their eyes lighted upon me more than once, never for a moment seemed to suspect me. And I know very well why. When I stand up, I'm the straightest and most perpendicular man that ever walked erect. But when I poise to jump, I bend my spine so much that I produce the impression of being almost hump-backed. It was that attitude you recognised in me when I jumped from the window ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen

... fire, it has exploded? A hapless air-navigator, plunging, amid torn parachutes, sand-bags, and confused wreck, fast enough into the jaws of the Devil! Suffice it to know that Teufelsdrockh rose into the highest regions of the Empyrean, by a natural parabolic track, and returned thence in a quick perpendicular one. For the rest, let any feeling reader, who has been unhappy enough to do the like, paint it out for himself: considering only that if he, for his perhaps comparatively insignificant mistress, underwent such agonies and frenzies, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... surprised his garrison at Lessandro. My knowledge of gunnery was not extensive, still I could not be ignorant of the chance he had, with three short twelve-pounders, of injuring any building whatever, when firing at it at a distance of eight hundred yards, in an almost perpendicular direction. The fort, besides, seemed very sturdy and solid, and I could not flatter him with hopes of success. He did not, however, appear to be without hope. Certainly, had he chosen to risk an assault with some trifling loss, the place might have been in his possession; but boats were not at hand ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... woods for a comparatively smooth trunk and proceed in the same manner as with the birch. To take it off a standing tree, cut one circle down at the butt and another as high as you can reach (Fig. 118) and slit it along a perpendicular line connecting the two cuts as in Fig. 38. This will doubtless in time kill the tree, but far from human habitations the few trees killed in this manner may do the forest good by giving more room for others to grow. Near town ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard

... the cluster of islands, the wind suddenly failed us; and the current hurried us with such velocity directly towards the point, that we expected momentarily to be dashed in pieces; but on coming within twice the length of the ship of the perpendicular precipice, which was some hundred feet high, the eddy swept her round three several times with great rapidity. The Captain would have dropped the anchor, but an old Chinese fisherman, whom we had taken on board to pilot us, made signs that it was too deep, and, at the same time, that there ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... which greatly varies in different individuals. It hangs over the voicebox, which it almost completely hides from view; but during the production of a high tone on the vowel A, as in "sad," it takes an almost perpendicular position. When the lid is so raised (pl. XIV, L) we can see right down to the bottom of it, where we observe that it bulges out a little. Extending from either side of the lid to the pyramids are two folds of mucous membrane, in the hinder part of either of which are ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke

... then proceeded upward, making for the nest of the tarantula. It reached this point by a single run, although its back was downward as it crawled. This it could easily do by means of the tubercules upon its toes—which enable lizards of the genus anolius to walk upon perpendicular walls, up glass windows, or ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... accidentally came in contact with his sides. He gave one tremendous leap forward—the ground sank under his feet—the horse was thrown over his own head—I was jerked into the air—and, amid an avalanche of earth and stones, we were hurled down a perpendicular bank into the brown, swollen ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various

... Richie's birth and breeding, and many others, would have been abashed at finding themselves alone with their Sovereign. But Richie Moniplies had an opinion of himself too high to be controlled by any such ideas; and having made his stiff reverence, he arose once more into his perpendicular height, and stood before James as ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... forms grand masses of foliage which turn a beautiful golden yellow in autumn; and the Black Poplar with its perpendicular leaves, rustling and trembling with every breath of wind, towers over ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock

... same view, a few moments earlier, Maggie had uttered a little cry of surprise, and had then remained silent. Etta looked out of the window and said nothing. It was a most singular out-look—weird, uncouth, prehistoric, as some parts of the earth still are. The castle was built on the edge of a perpendicular cliff. On this side it was impregnable. Any object dropped from the breakfast-room window would fall a clear two hundred feet to the brawling Oster River. The rock was black, and shining like the topmost crags of an Alpine mountain where snow and ice have ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman

... was at the crossing of the main highway over ten miles to the southwest. There, too, the river might be forded even if the Austrians had destroyed that bridge also; but here or elsewhere in the hills there could be no fording—the banks of the Ru were perpendicular cliffs. ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Aisle is a foot narrower than the corresponding south aisle: it has three windows each with two lights instead of two of three lights. This is known as St George's aisle. In the east wall is a piscina of Perpendicular date. Two doors lead into this aisle—one at the corner, where the walls of the aisle and transept meet, and one between the two easternmost windows. The principal objects in this aisle are two bulky chests, one containing ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins

... frontier of British Spain. The sport is pretty good—one cannot quite expect the Melton country, of course—the riding hard, and the horses invariably Spanish; no English horses would do, for no English horse would be equal to climbing up a perpendicular bank with sixteen stone on his back, and that is a feat the native steeds, bestridden by British warriors in pink who follow the Calpe pack, have sometimes to accomplish. There is a Spanish lyrical and theatrical troop in the town; ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea

... I mounted a hill on the right hand and sighted the Atalaya, another local lion. Here a perpendicular face of calcareous rock fronts a deep valley, backed by a rounded hill, with the blue chine of El Cumbre in the distance: this is the highest of the ridge, measuring 8,500 feet. The wall is pierced, like the torrent-side of Mar Saba (Jerusalem), with caves that shelter a troglodyte population ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... withstand any ordinary attack. A short distance away, however, was a rock rising seven hundred feet above the level of the sea, which entirely commanded it. This the enemy had left unfortified and unguarded because they believed it was inaccessible. In many places it was almost perpendicular, and though there was a path leading to the summit, this was in very few places wide enough to allow more than one person to ascend at a time. Admiral Hood in person reconnoitred and decided that a battery could be formed ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty

... out one of the most strenuous days I ever had in the islands, as the road—and what a road!—constantly led up and down the steepest slopes. It seemed to me we were climbing perpendicular mountains all day long, and I had many an opportunity of admiring the agility of my companions. I am a fair walker myself, but I had to crawl on my hands and knees in many spots where they jumped from a stone to a root, taking firm hold ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... Nottingham Castle, by which the young King Edward III. and his loyal associates gained access to the fortress and captured the murderous regent and usurper Mortimer, Earl of March, is known to this day as "Mortimer's Hole." It runs up through the perpendicular rock upon which the castle stands, on the south-east side from a place called Brewhouse yard, and has an exit in what was originally the courtyard of the building. The Earl was seized in the midst of his adherents and retainers on the night of October 19th, 1330, and after a skirmish, notwithstanding ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea

... the Duke, "that your shafts and bolts fall harmless on those ozier walls? Shoot in the air; let the arrow fall perpendicular on those within—fall as the vengeance of the saints falls—direct from heaven! Give me thy bow, Archer,—thus." He drew the bow as he sate on his steed, the arrow flashed up, and descended in the heart of the reserve, within a few feet ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... We were compelled to pass close under Capri[1], and its bold perpendicular cliffs towered magnificently above us, casting a deep shadow over the vessel as she sailed along. There was little wind outside the isle, and we were nearly becalmed; but this delay was amply compensated by the extreme beauty of the night. The brilliant moon, shining ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo

... passed, but still our anxious eyes were met by nothing but the perpendicular wall. At last, on the afternoon of January 12, the wall opened. This agreed with our expectations; we were now in long. 164deg., the selfsame point where our predecessors ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... the flotilla with a crash. First the narrow Wireless was seen to surge forward, rear up at a frightfully perpendicular angle, until it almost seemed as though the frail craft must be hurled completely over; and then swoop furiously down into the basin ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel

... knew how to present arms. I heard something coming, and called out, 'Who goes there?' and Alberta jumped up in such a hurry that the points other tent—her umbrella, I mean— scratched my face, and before I could recover arms, over went my umbrella, perpendicular, straight smash through the glass of the ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge

... be elbowed by those structures, not yet quite so frequent in London as in New York, which lift themselves in an outer grandeur unsupported by the successive levels of the social pretence within. I should say that with the English, more than with us, the perpendicular is still socially superior to the horizontal domestication. Yet the London flats are of more comfortable and tasteful arrangement than ours. They are better lighted always, never having (as far as I know) dark ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells

... pressure of the foot, the rider could move it downward, at will, within an arc of some ten degrees. This propeller, which was small in dimensions, but endowed with enormous speed, was, in its normal position, perpendicular to the frame. The pressure of the foot raised it to its highest point. In this position, the propeller turned at full speed and therefore tended to descend and, consequently, to point the front of the ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne

... crowned with the woods of Blaise Castle, and the other with a group of buildings consisting of the parish church, a charming little Gothic structure known as "The Hall," and the national schoolhouse. The church is a fine perpendicular edifice of considerable antiquity, with a square tower surmounted, in true West of England style, by a small turret, having a tiny Gothic spire at one corner. The parishioners are proud of their church, and with justice. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various

... her boy again! But he took good care to turn his eyes another way; and, as he wore the helmet of invisibility, the Gorgons knew not in what direction to follow him; nor did he fail to make the best use of the winged slippers, by soaring upward a perpendicular mile or so. At that height, when the screams of those abominable creatures sounded faintly beneath him, he made a straight course for the island of Seriphus, in order to carry Medusa's head to ...
— The Gorgon's Head - (From: "A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... nursery fable. He was a tall, thin, athletic figure; old indeed, and grey-haired, but with every muscle rendered as tough as whip-cord by constant exercise. He was dressed carelessly, and more like a Frenchman than an Englishman of the period, while, from his hard features and perpendicular rigidity of stature, he bore some resemblance to a Swiss officer of the guards, who had resided some time at Paris, and caught the costume, but not the ease or manner of its inhabitants. The truth was, that his language and habits were ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... of the world on the equinoctial line is or is not an inaccessible desert. The Spaniards affirm that it is inhabited by numerous peoples,[3] while the ancient writers maintain that it is uninhabitable because of the perpendicular rays of the sun. I must admit, however, that even amongst ancient authorities some have been found who sought to maintain that that part of the world was habitable.[4] When I asked the sailors of the Pinzons if they had seen the polar star to the south, ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt

... many presented the appearance of a fungus or great sea-mushroom, with a broad-spreading head springing from a small thick base. It is not a little singular that many of the growing islets which are nearly level with the surface of the water have a similar form, not rising from the bottom with a perpendicular side, but with broad overhanging heads resting upon a small base. In many places we passed over some of these isolated sea-mushrooms, upon which there was barely water for a small boat, where one step over the ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey

... I know not. The miracle grows as I ponder it. The wall was almost perpendicular and smooth. My weight on his jaws dragged him outwards. And yet, holding me by his teeth as a panther her cub and clinging like a squirrel to a tree, he climbed with me straight up ten or twelve feet, with only the help of my iron-shod feet scrambling on the rock. It was utterly impossible, yet ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young

... they were the two most ancient Christian patrons of Masonry; and, since their time, in every well-regulated and governed Lodge there has been a certain point within a circle, which circle is bounded on the East and the West by two perpendicular parallel lines, representing the anniversary of St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist, who were two perfect parallels, as well in Masonry as Christianity, on the vertex of which rests the Book of the Holy Scriptures, supporting Jacob's ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan

... third day the rescuers approached the camp of the exiles. There was an ominous quiet; no creature was to be seen; but the smoke which ascended into the air in perpendicular columns assured them that some, at least, were still alive. The party happened to reach first the teepee of the poor old woman who had been so faithfully ministered to by the twin sisters. They had no longer any food to give, but they had come to build her fire, if she should ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... was simple. First he took a metal stylus or a pencil and drew perpendicular lines in the side margins of his parchment, and horizontal lines at equal distances from top to bottom of the page. Then the task of copying was straightforward. If the book was to be embellished he left spaces ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage

... struck him several times, but, instead of weakening the monster, each shot seemed only to direct him towards the hunters, till at last he pursued two of them so closely that they threw aside their guns and pouches, and jumped down a perpendicular bank of twenty feet into the river: the bear sprang after them, and was within a few feet of the hindmost, when one of the hunters on shore shot him in the head, and finally killed him. They dragged him to the ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks

... greens, with here and there some slowly moving object, like a loose vegetable on a sluggish current of tidal gravy, and the spire of the Ritualistic church shooting-up at one end like an incorrigibly perpendicular leg of ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various

... times shifting his grips rapidly, that he was able to get his head and Ngakura's to the surface at intervals sufficiently near together to keep the breath in them. But the air was mostly water, what with flying spray and sheeted rain that poured along at right angles to the perpendicular. ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London

... the summit of the Pyrenees, whence one may look down on France, Spain, and the two seas. From this height they descended again by a fatiguing road into a deep valley. From the middle of this valley an isolated mountain rose, composed of rough and perpendicular rock, on whose summit was the castle, surrounded with a wall of brass. Brunello said, "Yonder is the stronghold where the enchanter keeps his prisoners; one must have wings to mount thither; it is easy to see that the aid of a flying horse must be necessary for ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... disturbed than it had appeared since leaving the Araguaya River. Due west farther away stood before us a weird-looking plateau with a vertical high wall to the north. To the south it showed three terraces, the two lower ones supported on perpendicular cliffs, whereas a convex slope was between the second and third, or top terrace. To the south-west in the far distance another high plateau could be perceived, also with vertical cliffs to the north, but slanting at its southern ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... could carry, and a weakness was observable in her knees; and when she saw me she was not so far gone as not to know who I was. She tried to make a curtsy, and in doing so very nearly lost her balance, and it took her some ten yards to recover her perpendicular. With a little struggling, stuttering, and stumbling, she got right, and pursued ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... placing the adjustable form around the lugs and strap as shown in this figure. Be sure to set the post straight, so that the covers will fit. A good thing is to try a cover over the post to see that the post is set up properly. The post must, of course, be perpendicular to the tops of the plates. If the slotted plate strap shown in Figure 5 is used, or if one or two plates have been cut off, melt the top of the lug of one of the plates which are to be burned oil, and the surfaces of the strap to which the plate is to be welded. Melt in lead from a burning-lead ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte

... Peru, acting in conjunction with one to Lapland, which was sent out for the same purpose in the eighteenth century, it had been noticed that the attraction of the mountainous regions deflected the plumb-line of the large instruments seven or eight seconds from the perpendicular, and, consequently, greatly impaired the enterprise. At the Cape, on the contrary, there was a magnificent table-land of vast expanse, where this difficulty could not occur. Accordingly, on the 4th of September, 1834, with a design to become perfectly familiar with ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum

... position. He had fixed the one stick across the top of the other so as to form a rough T, and was now busy in fitting a smaller stick into the angle between them, by manipulating which, the cross one could be either cocked up or depressed to any extent. He had cut notches, too, in the perpendicular stick, so that, by the aid of the small prop, the cross one could be kept in any ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various

... line formed almost a perpendicular from Noyon in France north to the Belgian coast, south of Ostend. A battle raged for several days in West Flanders and Northern France and both sides claimed successes. The losses of the Allies and the Germans were estimated in the thousands and the wounded were sent back ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... turned a jutting point of rock, and suddenly stood face to face with Zeppa. His jaw dropped, his eyes glared, his knees smote together, and lemon-yellow took the place of brown-ochre on his cheeks. It was an awkward place of meeting, for the path, if we may so style it, was a mere ledge, with a perpendicular cliff on one side, a precipice on ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne

... cushion was a pin in the shape of an arrow (an arrow of course suggested a transpierced heart), which Snorky wore for important ceremonies, when he donned a perpendicular collar and a white coaching tie. On the wall was a Farmington banner and on the sofa five pillows ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson

... with this homage, which, she said, was greater than his offence. The guards, whose business it was to proceed to a verification, believed the culprit to be the devil, because never in their wits had they seen an "I" so perpendicular as was the old man. He was marched in triumph through the town to the palace of the duke, to whom the guards and others stated the facts. In that period of ignorance, this affair was thought so much ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... represented as being about half a mile from the spectator. I really know the distance and do not merely guess it, and I know how I know it. I know it simply from the geometrical principle that with a given angle at the apex of a triangle the length of a perpendicular dropped from the apex to the base of the triangle will always bear the same ratio to the length of the base, whatever the size of the triangle may be. In this way I know the distance of the boat in the picture by combining mathematics and my ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward

... rattle in its throat, stumbled down the two steps, got past the two ancient cashiers, and shouldered himself into the musty back closet where Mr. Lorry sat at great books ruled for figures, with perpendicular iron bars to his window as if that were ruled for figures too, and everything under the ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... laborious scramble over large, rough stones, but the ascent of the other threatened to be difficult. It rose in front, a wall of splintered crag, seamed by deep gullies, for the strata was tilted up nearly perpendicular. All the gullies were climbed by expert mountaineers, but this needed a party and a rope, and the other way, round the shoulder of the great rock, was almost as hard. Festing knew the easiest plan was to descend ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss

... almost distress; for she found herself shut in a little space by buildings of varying heights. Behind her lay the difficult route over which she had come, and on the east uprose a steep bank or bluff. Against this was placed a nearly perpendicular sort of ladder, and this steep stair was the only ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond

... between the park and the shore. The further end of it was dark with trees. The upper half of the door by which they had entered was a wooden grating, for the admission of light, and through it they were now gazing, though they could see little but the straight lines of almost perpendicular rain that scratched out the colours of the landscape. The sea was troubled, although no wind blew; it heaved as with an inward unrest. But suddenly there was a great broken sound somewhere in the air; and the next moment a storm came tearing over the face of the sea, covering it with blackness ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... maks an auld body's banes ache sair, siccan a road, as yon!" said the Scotchwoman, with a significant grimace, as the wagon paused a moment at the foot of a perpendicular ascent. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... care to make my den fairly tight, a work which occupied me nearly four weeks, for I had no tools, save a hatchet, knife, and metal-shod ski-staff. I dug a passage in the ground two feet wide, two deep, and ten long, with perpendicular sides, and at its north end a circular space, twelve feet across, also with perpendicular sides, which I lined with stones; the whole excavation I covered with inch-thick walrus-hide, skinned during a whole bitter week ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... an oily, shining black, and as far as the conformation of the head and face is concerned and the relative proportion of nervous matter outside of the cranium to the quantity of cerebral matter within it, is found between the simiadiae[257] and the Caucasian. Thus, in the typical negro, a perpendicular line, let fall from the forehead, cuts off a large portion of the face, throwing the mouth, the thick lips, and the projecting teeth anterior to the cranium, but not the entire face, as in the lower animals ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... of a great number of small buildings, but from the landing-place could be seen the end of an immense structure with a forest of palms behind it. The rear of it was not perpendicular, but slanted outward, like many of the walls of corn-houses in New England, doubtless to keep the rain from the roof from penetrating. All the party, including the sailors, landed; for Mr. Eng declared ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic

... West.) the Variation of the Compass 15 degrees 30 minutes West, decreasing as he says, which I much doubt;* (* Cook was right: the variation was increasing.) neither does this Variation agree with our own Observations. The Tides flow full, and Change North and South, and rise Perpendicular 7 feet at Spring Tides and 4 feet at Niep tides. We found the North point of the Diping Needle, belonging to the Royal Society, to Dip 77 degrees 18 minutes. The Refreshments for Shipping to be got at this place are Wine, Water, Fruit of Several Sorts, and Onions in Plenty, and some ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook

... to foresee that certain phenomena which might be imagined a priori cannot exist. Thus, for instance, it is impossible that an electric field, a magnitude directed and not superposable on its image in a mirror perpendicular to its direction, could be created at right angles to the plane of symmetry of the medium; while it would be possible to create a magnetic field under ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare

... which the old shrew had given me pursued me everywhere. More than once, while climbing the almost perpendicular ladder to my loft, feeling my clothing caught on some point, I trembled from head to foot, imagining that the old wretch was hanging to the tails of my coat in order ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... them as nearly upright as they can, with the common carpenters' instruments; but they are not exact. To set a post of any kind, with great precision, perpendicular to the horizon, would require very expensive mathematical instruments, and very laborious and nice observations. Then, again, if the clock had been exact, and the post perfectly upright, Jonas could not have marked the place of the shadow exactly. ...
— Rollo's Experiments • Jacob Abbott

... peopled with ranks of ghostly auditors gazing upon the stage. It was there, full in our faces, that the most startling and almost incredible effect was visible. The circle of the mountains was there broken by an opening flanked on either side by stupendous perpendicular cliffs, and we looked through it upon a charming landscape bathed in glorious sunshine. A blue stream dashed foaming through the great gap and wandered off to join the river beyond. The broad and undulating ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... to me that the insensibility which came upon Glaisher, and in a lesser degree upon Coxwell, when, in 1862, they ascended in a balloon to the height of thirty thousand feet, was due to the extreme speed with which a perpendicular ascent is made. Doing it at an easy gradient and accustoming oneself to the lessened barometric pressure by slow degrees, there are no such dreadful symptoms. At the same great height I found that even without my oxygen inhaler I could ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle

... distance was short between the ledge and the shore, and in a moment more the boat struck heavily upon the gravelly beach, which was, at this time of tide, not more than ten feet wide, and the waves already rolled over it against the perpendicular rocks. With one consent, the four men leaped from the boat into the surf. The mate carried the painter on shore with him, and endeavored to swing around the boat, which had come stern foremost to the beach. Burns imprudently moved out ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic

... a hat is never a "creation" in itself. The wearer must always be considered. Short, stout women should avoid horizontal stripes or lines of ornamentation that call attention to breadth, and should choose those perpendicular stripes and lines which tend to give an impression of height and slenderness. A hat lining may be used to put rosiness into a pale face, and a color may be selected for a dress which will neutralize too much redness in the skin. But these ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller

... moments were precious. They had to fly. The escape was not very difficult, except the twenty feet of perpendicular fall outside ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... One of the first rules of safety for a trail without turnouts is that no loose stock must be allowed on it. My Indian horse chose that particular time and place to throw a fit of temperament, and he climbed out of the way of the wild mules by scrambling up a perpendicular rock and flattening out against the hillside. I slid off over his tail and landed in the trail on the back of my neck, but popped up to see what had happened to the Chief. The pack mules were being urged on from the rear by a fool mule-skinner, and they had crowded Tony, the Chief's ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith

... of this nest seems to be formed of such dirt or loam as comes most readily to hand, and is tempered and wrought together with little bits of broken straws to render it tough and tenacious. As this bird often builds against a perpendicular wall without any projecting ledge under, it requires its utmost efforts to get the first foundation firmly fixed, so that it may safely carry the superstructure. On this occasion the bird not only clings with its claws, but partly supports itself by strongly inclining ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White

... allowed to stand for a short time. If the disease is confined to the two front feet, the hind feet are placed well under the center of the body to support the weight and the front ones are advanced in front of a perpendicular line so as to lessen the weight they must bear. If they are made to move, the same position of the feet is maintained. If made to turn in a small circle, they do so by using the hind feet as a pivot, bringing the front parts around by placing as little ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix

... her people are born and bred. To her climate her people are born and bred. The climate would take care of the rest. You can't exactly despatch motors and motor guns down swamps for a hundred miles and over cataracts and through mountain passes on the perpendicular. Canada's back country is her perpetual city of refuge. Nevertheless, the day of dependence on false security is past. National status implies national defense, and at time of writing the indications are that the whole military system of the Dominion will be put on a ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut

... at me with eyes narrowed and his forehead ridged in tiny, perpendicular folds. Presently he leaned forward, his hands between his ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher

... he managed to escape? I had stood with him alone on that dizzy height, and as far as I remembered the cliff was perpendicular there; he had I felt slipped from me, and I had heard the sound of a ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking

... between those of the child and the adult man; they are softer, more graceful and delicate, and the apophyses and ridges for the attachment of muscles are less pronounced,... the forehead is ... more perpendicular, to such a degree that in a group of skulls those of the two sexes have been mistaken for different types; the superciliary ridges and the glabella are less developed, often not at all; the crown is higher and more horizontal; the brain weight and ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas

... us look down, we discern the gray roofs of St. Enimie wedged between the congregated escarpments far below, the little town lying immediately under our feet, as the streets around St. Paul's when viewed from the dome. We say to ourselves we can never get there. The feat of descending those perpendicular cliffs seems impossible. It does not do to contemplate the road we have to take, winding like a ribbon round the upright shafts of the Causse. Follow it we must. We are high above the inhabited world, up in cloudland; there is nothing to do but descend as best we can; so we trust to ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... began to lay back his ears and pull so violently on the rein that his rider had all she could do to hold him, and lacked sufficient strength to direct his course. Seeing Zibeline's danger, Henri hastened to slacken his horse's pace, but it was too late: the almost perpendicular declivity of the other side of the hill added fresh impetus to the ungovernable rush of Seaman, who suddenly became ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... schoolmaster, who was much more inebriated than the pedlar, "there's argument even in that and, you see, the perpendicular deviation must arise from the head being too heavy, that's clear; and then, you see, the feet, from the centre of gravity being destroyed, become too light; and if you put that and that together, why, a man can't stand. ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat

... which was the frame's excuse for being, although a compartment above and one below held squares of glass covered with paint instead of mercury. The lower one was colored like the contents of a wash-tub after a liberal use of indigo; and in the centre was a horizontal stroke of red, surmounted by a perpendicular dash of white, intersected by an oblique line of black—all of which represented a red boat, with a white sail and black spar, making an endless voyage across the lake of indigo. The black crosses in ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.

... equally, and it is called a poor time-keeper, when the difficulty may be that it is not properly set up. A clock which will run when it is much out of beat, is a very good one, and it must run very easily, because it has a great disadvantage to overcome, viz: a greater distance from a perpendicular line one way than the other in order that the verge may escape the teeth. A clock may be set up in perfect beat, but the shelf is liable to settle or warp, and get out of beat so gradually, that it might not be remarked by one not suspecting ...
— History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, - and Life of Chauncey Jerome • Chauncey Jerome

... are shown by straight lines running parallel to each other across the chart. The degrees and minutes of these parallels are given on the perpendicular border of the chart. Meridians of longitude are shown by straight lines running up and down, perpendicular to the parallels of latitude, and the degrees and minutes of these meridians are given on the horizontal border of ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper

... thing to negotiate that stiff mountainside in the darkness, where a slip would have sent one of them rolling down into the sharp rock-slide beneath. Presently they came to a rockrim, a sheer descent of twenty-five feet down the perpendicular face of a cliff. ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine

... covered with rags, and depressed with misery. It would have been no hard matter, then, to have foretold the fate of Rome. The natural order of things was deranged to too violent an extreme to be of long duration. The state was become like a wall that had declined from the perpendicular, while age was every day weakening the cement, by which it was held together, and though of the time and hour of destruction no man knew, the ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair

... basements, usually arched as if crushed beneath the weight of the mountains which they support, look like dens of a primitive race, continually receiving and pouring forth a stream of people. You lift your eyes, and you feel that up there behind the perpendicular wall, with its innumerable windows, is a multitude coming and going,—crowding the offices that perforate these cliffs of brick and iron, dizzied with the speed of the elevators. You divine, you feel the hot breath of speculation ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... Hampden, identified to all time with the patriot of that name; and so on indefinitely. At Monk's Risborough, another hamlet with an ancient-sounding name, but possessing no special history, is a church of the Perpendicular period containing some features of exceptional interest, and internally one of the most charmingly picturesque of its kind. The carved tie-beams of the porch with their masks and tracery and the great stone stoup which appears in one corner have ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield

... love and death. Yet, sequestered as the valley is and must always have been, it is not wholly deserted. A convent or a village may be observed here and there standing out against the sky on the top of some beetling crag, or clinging to the face of a nearly perpendicular cliff high above the foam and the din of the river; and at evening the lights that twinkle through the gloom betray the presence of human habitations on slopes which might seem inaccessible to man. In antiquity the whole of the lovely vale appears to have been dedicated ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... left Falconhurst with the cart laden with a cargo of spades, hammers, chisels, pickaxes, and crowbars, and began our undertaking. On the smooth face of the perpendicular rock I drew out in chalk the size of the proposed entrance, and then, with minds bent on success, we battered away. Six days of hard and incessant toil made but little impression; I do not think ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester

... just wide enough to let a man through, conveys one to the top, wherein four small windows are to be found. By seizing the wall at one of the apertures and shaking it violently an unpleasant oscillation can be started, and continues of its own accord, the minaret diverging from the perpendicular as much as two inches on either side. Presently the second minaret begins to vibrate also in uniformity with the first, and the vibration can be felt along the front roof-platform between the two minarets, but not in ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... quite made it through the hiccup. The ship was almost perpendicular to her line of ...
— Hanging by a Thread • Gordon Randall Garrett

... at this point was absolutely impassable for animals. The banks were ten feet high and perpendicular. The water was perhaps five or six feet deep and the width of the swift stream not over twenty or thirty feet. The trees had interlaced their roots and branches across the river and in the water. No animal, not a tree climber, could possibly cross the ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon

... little feet had scrambled to the perpendicular, each pair of hands was clapped noisily, each little throat ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade

... hastily. Her eyes wandered vaguely over the room seeking a subject for immediate discussion; all that she saw was the perpendicular cue of one of the ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner

... of equal arms of a straight lever will balance each other. What but experience, we may ask, in the first place, can possibly inform us that a force so applied will have any tendency to turn the lever on its centre at all? or that force can be so transmitted along a rigid line perpendicular to its direction, as to act elsewhere in space than along its own line of action? Surely this is so far from being self-evident that it has even a paradoxical appearance, which is only to be removed ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... Direct-vision Spectroscope has been quite recently made by Mr Hilger under Mr Christie's direction on a new plan, in which either great dispersion or great purity of spectrum is obtained by the use of 'Half-prisms,' according as the incident pencil falls first on the perpendicular or on the oblique face. In this Spectroscope either one or two half prisms can be used at pleasure, according to the dispersion required, and there is facility for increasing the train to three or four half-prisms, though the dispersion ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy

... a chemist, I managed to see some of these cases a few days later. The hospital was so crowded that many cases were lying on stretchers in the garden that lies at the back of all these hideous perpendicular French houses, shielded from the weather by an awning only. But the worst cases were upstairs in a long hall—some eighteen of them, none of which had any hope. Reeking with chlorine, their faces a livid purple or an even ghastlier green, they lay there ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry

... low broken point of the island, sailed through the racing currents between the lower end of La Bellissima and "Our Lady of the Angels," more slowly past what looked to be a perpendicular forest. From water to crest the gulches and converging spurs of this hillside in the sea were a dense mass of oaks, bays, underbrush; here and there a tall slender tree with a bark like red kid and a flirting polished leaf, at which Concha clapped her hands as at sight of an old friend and called ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton

... she did not comprehend it. But Charles did not leave her long in doubt. On the north side of the Mohawk, and at about fifty miles from its mouth, is a mountain which, as we have already said, juts, in a nearly perpendicular promontory, into the bed of the river; its inclination is sufficient to admit of its receiving the name of a nose. Without the least intention of alluding to our hero, the early settlers had affixed ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper

... tolerably well from the sea, especially if situated actually upon the margin of the water. The town represented a front of about a mile, less than five feet above the level of the sea, bordered by a masonry quay perpendicular to the surface, from which several wooden jetties of inferior and very ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... right rose a precipitous rock wall surmounted by a fringe of thick shrubbery. On the left was another wall, perpendicular, flat on its top and stretching away into the distance, forming a grass plateau. Directly in front of him was a narrow canyon through which he could see a plain that stretched away into ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer

... first understand, but what I soon saw to be wise. He took a steep slant downward over the face of the snow-slope, and though such a pitch of descent a little unnerved me, it was well in the end. For when we had gone down perhaps 900 feet, or a thousand, in perpendicular distance, even I, half numb and fainting, could feel that the storm was less violent. Another two hundred, and the flakes could be seen not driving in flashes past, but separately falling. Then in some few minutes ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... possible direction through the hills (having apparently formed, at some remote period, the bed of a torrent), in no instance proceeding more than twenty yards without an abrupt turn. The sides of this dell would have averaged, I am sure, seventy or eighty feet in perpendicular altitude throughout the whole of their extent, and in some portions they arose to an astonishing height, overshadowing the pass so completely that but little of the light of day could penetrate. The general width was about forty feet, and ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... but he who had murdered was driven by unbearable fear out into the open, where he could see his enemy. He was seen and hunted, but it seemed to him seven times better than to lie still in helpless inactivity. He fled from his pursuers, slid down precipices, sprang over streams, climbed up perpendicular mountain walls. All latent strength and dexterity in him was called forth by the excitement of danger. His body became elastic like a steel spring, his foot made no false step, his hand never lost its hold, eye and ear were twice as sharp as usual. He understood ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof

... side—the concave of the curve—is a long easy slope, so gradual that one hardly realises where it shades into the river-bottom itself. On the other—the convex of the curve—where the swift waters were turned aside to a new direction, is a high, perpendicular cliff running in an almost unbroken breastwork for a great many miles, and baked as hard as iron in this sunny and almost rainless climate. Occasional showers have here and there started to eat out little transverse gullies, but with a few exceptions have only gone so far ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White

... candles stuck by lumps of clay to their felt hats, the travellers have painfully descended by perpendicular ladders and along dripping-wet rock passages, fathoms down into pitchy darkness; the miner who guides them ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... Kermanshah, in Persia, had observed the curious cuneiform inscriptions on the old monuments in the neighbourhood—so old that all historical traces of them had been lost,—and amongst the inscriptions which he copied was that on the celebrated rock of Behistun—a perpendicular rock rising abruptly some 1700 feet from the plain, the lower part bearing inscriptions for the space of about 300 feet in three languages—Persian, Scythian, and Assyrian. Comparison of the known with the unknown, of the language which survived with the language that had ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... for I dislike the place exceedingly, and am disappointed in it. Their new buildings that are so admired, look like a collection of little hospitals; the rest is detestable; and all crammed together, and surrounded with perpendicular hills that have no beauty. The river is paltry enough to be the Seine or Tiber. Oh! how ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... tower of the more ordinary type. Fortunately Sir Gilbert Scott was called in to restore the church, and refused to have a hand in destroying the spire, so the old parish church stands as it was built, but with its spire drawn curiously out of the perpendicular by the action of the sun's rays on ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland

... had accompanied us to New Holland suddenly left us, shifting round to north-east and by east; we were obliged to lay our heads off-shore, in order to weather Swilly and the Eddystone (a perpendicular rock about a league to the eastward of Swilly) and the next day we had the mortification of a foul wind, a thing to which ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... third gentleman to her sister; a tall, fair, slender young man who suggested that he had made a mistake in the shade of his tight, perpendicular coat, ordering it of too heavenly a blue. This added however to the candour of his appearance, and if he was a dose, as Selina had described him, he could only operate beneficently. There were moments when Laura's heart rather yearned towards her countrymen, and now, though she was preoccupied and ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James

... along the upper edge of a forest, and then turned up a narrow gorge in the hillside with a little rivulet running down it. The ravine widened out as they went up it, till they reached a spot where it formed a circular area of some hundred and fifty feet in diameter, surrounded on all sides by perpendicular rocks, with a tiny cascade a hundred feet in height falling into it at the farther end. Some rough huts of boughs of trees were erected ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty

... and a fat Englishman, who was of the party, was hoisted into a third, borne by eight men. I was accommodated with a tough stick, and we began to plough our way up. The ascent was as steep as this line /—very nearly perpendicular. We were all tumbling at every stop; and looking up and seeing the people in advance tumbling over one's very head, and looking down and seeing hundreds of feet of smooth ice below, was, I must confess, anything but agreeable. However, I knew there was little chance ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens

... him. "The anopheles. It bites a man who has fever, then bites a well man and leaves the fever in him. Inside of ten days he's sick, unless he takes a huge dose of quinine right away. Mosquito attacks perpendicular to the skin. That is, it stands on its head. If you ever notice one of them biting that way get busy with ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel



Words linked to "Perpendicular" :   plumb bob, plumb, gothic, normal, parallel, upended, right, sounding line, English-Gothic, Gothic architecture, horizontal, plummet, steep, plumb rule, oblique, perpendicular style, straight



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