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Perpendicular   /pˌərpəndˈɪkjələr/   Listen
Perpendicular

adjective
1.
Intersecting at or forming right angles.
2.
At right angles to the plane of the horizon or a base line.  Synonym: vertical.  "The monument consists of two vertical pillars supporting a horizontal slab" , "Measure the perpendicular height"
3.
Extremely steep.



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"Perpendicular" Quotes from Famous Books



... contour of his features was remarkably regular, though his lips were rather full, and his nose somewhat flat, yet free from the disgusting depression and cavities of the negro race. His forehead was high and perpendicular, while his mouth glistened with ivory when he spoke or smiled. I had frequent opportunities to talk with the king afterwards, and was always delighted by the affectionate simplicity of his demeanor. ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... corner. This was Matthew Branthwaite, the wit and sage of Wythburn, once a weaver, but living now on the husbandings of earlier life. He was tall and slight, and somewhat bent with age. He was dressed in a long brown sack coat, belted at the waist, below which were pockets cut perpendicular at the side. Ribbed worsted stockings and heavy shoes made up, with the greater garment, the sum of his visible attire. Old Matthew had a vast reputation for wise saws and proverbs; his speech seemed to be made of little else; and though the dalespeople ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... Then I began to wave my arms about—I had nothing on above the waist—and in a moment I saw a face with a uniform cap peer out through the jungle, and a hand was waved. I made signs to him to make his way to the foot of the perpendicular wall of rock beneath me. I then unwound the turban, whose length was, I knew, amply sufficient to reach to the bottom, and then looked round for something to write on. I had my pencil still in my trousers pocket, but ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty

... transformation. It leads the critic to comprehend the whole, and encourages the habit of scientific tolerance. We are saved by it from uselessly fretting ourselves because of the ungodly and the inevitable; from mourning over the decline of Gothic architecture into Perpendicular aridity and flamboyant feebleness, over the passage of the scepter from Sophocles to Euripides or from Tasso to Marino, over the chaos of Mannerism, Eclecticism and Naturalism into which Italian painting plunged from the height of its maturity. This toleration and acceptance ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... 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 worked by ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson

... here, Wayland? D' y'r homesteaders farm on th' perpendicular, or the level; an' what will they ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... is, not merely the outside covering—may be compared to a curtain, and the underlying muscles to the cords by which it is drawn aside. The constant drawing of these cords, you know, produces in time the facial wrinkles, always perpendicular to the muscles causing them. If you sever a number of these cords, you alter the entire drape of the curtain. It was for Davenport to learn what severances would produce, not the disagreeable effect of the operation ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens

... momentarily more 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 ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh

... 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 event ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair

... broad channel filled to the brim, flowing slowly through a flat country and carrying out to the sea a quantity of fine sediment. Higher up it branches into a number of smaller channels, flowing alternately through flat valleys and between high banks; sometimes he finds a deep rocky bed with perpendicular walls, carrying the water through a chain of hills; where the stream is narrow he finds it deep, where wide shallow. Further up still, he comes to a mountainous region, with hundreds of streams and rivulets, each with its tributary ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... narrow valley, shut in on two sides by craggy, precipitous rocks, and shrouded on the others by thick pines, hemlocks and cedars, between which there was only one small spot, to which the rays of the sun at noon could penetrate. On climbing up the rude and almost perpendicular steps of the rock on either side, the eye could command a full view of the bay on the south, and a prospect of a considerable portion of the surrounding country. The place of their retreat has ever since been called the Pirates' Glen, and they could not have selected a spot on the ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms

... and rises with the southerly one. When you travel over the country, you will find that the valleys are cool and the mountain tops warm. The bees have no sting, and many of the beautiful flowers have no smell. The leaves of the trees are nearly always perpendicular instead of horizontal, as in your country, and consequently one gets very little shade under ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox

... turn to the left, the trees suddenly came to an end, and in their place were large piles of mossy, ragged boulders. The canyon ended in a perpendicular, moss-covered wall, hundreds of feet high, and from the top of this wrinkled old cliff leaped the stream into the canyon below. On an old tin sign, fastened to the stump of an immense tree, were the words, "St. Marys." Directly at the base of the falls, and at their extreme ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley

... avoiding death the sight of the sinking hull was one that held the attention of those in the water. One of the sailors said afterward: "Her great hull rose into the air and neared the perpendicular. As the form of the vessel rose she seemed to shorten, and just as a duck dives so she disappeared. She went almost noiselessly. Fortunately her propellers had stopped, for had these been going, the vortex of her four screws would have dragged down many of those whose lives were ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... him dreadful and intolerable now seemed pleasant. After going round the place where yesterday they had found the animal and not finding anything, he felt inclined to rest. The sun stood right above the forest and poured its perpendicular rays down on his back and head whenever he came out into a glade or onto the road. The seven heavy pheasants dragged painfully at his waist. Having found the traces of yesterday's stag he crept under a bush into the thicket just where the stag had lain, and lay down in its lair. He examined the ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy

... same width as the nave, is possessed of two arcades and divided into three aisles; thus the arcade of the nave abuts upon the centre of the chancel arch. Parts of the church certainly date from Chaucer's day, but most of it is Perpendicular in style. ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton

... polished, and apparently tapering regularly, the scrutinising investigation of the microscope shows that it is all rough and irregular. What would a builder do if he had not a T-square and a level? His wall would be ever so far out, whilst he thought it perfectly perpendicular. And remember that a line at a very acute angle of deflection only needs to be carried out far enough to diverge so widely from the other line that you could put the whole solar system in between the two. The smallest departure from the line of right will end, unless it is checked, away out ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... friend's discovery, and I 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 glacier," said Tom, "probably more elevated than the ...
— My Terminal Moraine - 1892 • Frank E. Stockton

... hair wash. The figure of the monk in "Romeo and Juliet" literally cut out of wood, carries as much expression in its face as a lay figure; while the walls of Northampton Castle (in "King John") are so much out of the perpendicular, that the courtiers seem less concerned at finding the dead body of Arthur, than in seeking a place of shelter from the impending downfall. Henry the Eighth, although acknowledged to be a corpulent, was not, so far as we know, a deformed man; the preposterous "beak" of Richard the Third occupies ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... intercourse in the upper circles of society. He never established intimate relations with the rules of German. He used small initials for substantives, or capitalized verbs and adjectives according as they appeared important to him. His punctuation was arbitrary; generally he drew a perpendicular line between his words, letting it suffice for a comma or period as the case might be (a proceeding which adds not a little to the embarrassments of him who seeks to ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven

... method of work 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 for the illuminator to ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage

... to travel once more in single file, for the path runs along a mountain spur almost as perpendicular as a wall; we are between two precipices, down which even the boldest cannot look without a shudder. The incline, moreover, is rapid, and from time to time we come to places where the ridge is so broken and insecure that we have to dismount, let our mules go first, ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall

... and confused wreck, fast enough into the jaws of the Devil! Suffice it to know that Teufelsdroeckh 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, what must Teufelsdroeckh's have been, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... river from bank to bank to bar the channel, nearly opposite Fort Jackson and exposed to the perpendicular fire of St. Philip, were heavy ship's chains, supported and buoyed by hulks, rafts, and logs, and half a dozen large schooners. The rebels had also established some works on the banks of the river about four miles from town, known as the McGehee and Chalmette batteries, the latter being ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various

... highway and drove along a lane across the fields, which had once been divided from each other by gates. Of these there was nothing now standing but the posts, some of which could hardly be said to stand, but declining from the perpendicular, were only kept from falling by the bushes. The lane was so rough and so bad from want of mending that they could only walk the impatient horse, and at times the jolting was ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies

... see the canyon with its perpendicular gray stone walls. It falls below our trail and we ride along the brink of it and down in the bottom see the black entrance to a cave. Then we come to the dry bed of a stream which we follow until we come to ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James

... When the woodmen cut down a fir plantation in the Chace there was a young oak among it that overtopped the firs, and yet its diameter was so small that it looked no larger than a pole; and the supporting boughs of the firs being now removed it could not uphold itself, but bent so much from the perpendicular as to appear incapable of withstanding a gale. The bark of the oak, when stripped and stacked, requires fine weather to dry it, much the same as hay, so that a wet season ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies

... it might otherwise be. This weight lags behind when the earth slips forward in the first movement of the oscillation, with the effect that the walls of the building are pretty sure to be thrust so far beyond the perpendicular that they give way and are carried down by the weight which they bore. It has often been remarked in earthquake shocks that tall columns, even where composed of many blocks, survive a shock which overturns lower buildings where thin walls support several floors, on each of which is accumulated ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... the town of Lumberville there was a cliff which rose sheer 200 feet above the level of the river. So perpendicular was the cliff that a stone dropped from the overhanging ledge at the top would fall straight down to the railroad track below without touching a twig in its course. Back of this broad ledge there was a very peculiar formation. A column of stone rose abruptly 40 feet higher ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond

... brought over a canoe to carry our baggage. I did not, however, think it possible to get the cattle down the bank, which is here more than forty feet above the water; but the Negroes seized the horses, and launched one at a time down a sort of trench or gulley that was almost perpendicular, and seemed to have been worn smooth by this sort of use. After the terrified cattle had been plunged in this manner to the water's edge, every man got down as well as he could. The ferryman then taking hold of the most steady of the horses by a rope, led him into the ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... had gone on to the great railway contractor, Dobbs, and the question how many votes his influence was really worth; and, somehow, I never got very far into the pros and cons of these discussions, which soon subsided into the fairy tale I have mentioned, and that sweet perpendicular sleep—all the sweeter, like everything else, for being ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... a man or a woman, a flock of sheep, all have the same qualities for a painter. There are," with a gesture of his hands to make his meaning clear, "things that lie flat, that are horizontal, like a plain; and there are others which stand up, are perpendicular; and there are the planes between: all of which should be expressed in a picture. There are the distances between objects also. But all this can be found in the simplest thing as ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various

... to believe the intelligence. The squares were well guarded, the garrison ever alert. Spaniards were not birds of prey to fly up those perpendicular heights, and for beings without wings the thing was impossible. He followed Fleming through the darkness, and was soon convinced that the impossible was true. The precious squares were in the hands of the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... in the structure of these buildings is that while the inside walls of tower or temple are perpendicular, the outside walls are sloping. This was intended to give stability to the structure, which in modern buildings is imparted by their buttresses; but in the case of the temples it has a further value in that it adds greatly to the feeling of massive dignity ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly

... Hermitage, and it is his business to know all the time what the state of the mountain is, and where it is safe to go. There are two craters now. One of them they cannot go down into, for the sides have caved in all around, and formed perpendicular cliffs. But at the other crater there is on one side a slope of sand and slag, where people can go down, and walk over the lava on ...
— Rollo in Naples • Jacob Abbott

... 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, ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... a boot-jack, and so caught the full force of the waves. One corner, as already mentioned, was called Flinty Point, the other Needle Point, and between these two points there was no gangway within the semicircle up the wall of cliff. Indeed, within the cove the cliff was perpendicular, or rather overhanging, as far as such crumbling earth would admit of its overhanging. To reach a gangway, a person inside the cove would have to leave the cliff wall for the open sands, and pass round either ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... a laugh, for the creature had a perpendicular neck, like a funnel, that rose out of a body like ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... city. Stockport lies immediately to the east. The name occurs in the formerly separate villages of Cheadle Hulme, Cheadle Bulkeley and Cheadle Moseley. There are cotton printing and bleaching works in the locality. The parish church of St Giles, Cheadle, is Perpendicular, containing an altar-tomb of the 15th ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... Hawkley was torn from its place, and fell down, leaving a high freestone cliff naked and bare, and resembling the steep side of a chalk-pit. It appears that this huge fragment, being perhaps sapped and undermined by waters, foundered, and was engulfed, going down in a perpendicular direction; for a gate which stood in the field, on the top of the hill, after sinking with its posts for thirty or forty feet, remained in so true and upright a position as to open and shut with great exactness, just as in its first situation. Several oaks also are still ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White

... Invergordon to Cromarty pier, accomplishing the journey in forty-five minutes. The fare between the two piers is one shilling, and there is no extra charge for the use of the cabin, which is reached by a perpendicular and very slippery ladder, and would be better suited for philosophical reflection in a gale if the crew did not use it as a store-room for engine-grease and old oilskins. In the Outer Islands, Watt's machine ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... the earth. Here, too, where different strata have been tilted up, it might seem at first sight as if they were arranged perpendicularly and side by side, none underlying the other, none presupposing the other. But as the geologist, on the strength of more general evidence, has to reverse this perpendicular position, and to re-arrange his strata in their natural order, and as they followed each other horizontally, the student of language too is irresistibly driven to the same conclusion. No language can by any possibility ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller

... but no person questioned their right to the freedom of the place; a sleepy soldier at the gate merely glancing indifferently at them as they passed beneath the heavy archway. Gabled houses, with a tendency to incline from the perpendicular, overlooked the winding street; dull, round panes of glass stared at them, fraught with mystery and the possibility of spying eyes behind; but the thoroughfare in that vicinity appeared deserted, ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... disappointed. There is now a small mosque, said to cover the exact spot where Sin and Lam sank into the ground, which is called Seracheh, to which people resort to pray, and make vows; and close by is an almost perpendicular rock, whence (the inhabitants aver) may be seen the marks of the feet of the horses ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne

... see if it's been reported in any of the other areas. We're located a little out of the way here, and I thought perhaps some of the stations farther north or south had seen it. Yes. That's right: two locomotive limbs, two handling limbs. Big as a human, and they hold their bodies perpendicular to the ground. Yes, sir, I know it sounds silly, and I'm going out to check the story now, but you ought to see these bathygraphs. If it's a hoax, there's an expert behind it. Very well, sir; ...
— The Asses of Balaam • Gordon Randall Garrett

... from his girdle, he unlocked this door, and throwing it open, signed to me to pass in. I did so, and found myself in a plain stone-walled room with a vaulted roof, and one very large, lofty, uncurtained window which looked out upon the sea and sheer down the perpendicular face of the rock on which the Chateau d'Aselzion was built. The furniture consisted of one small camp bedstead, a table, and two easy chairs, a piece of rough matting on the floor near the bed, and a ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... the perpendicular arm, or spur, that ran out into the sea of mesquit, rose a low hill that was itself in the nature of an inner spur although, since it failed to reach the mountain, it might be regarded as a long flat island, ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis

... the English horse 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 ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... before my residence there. When we got a little way along the valley, I looked back, and the view from below was, in a different style, as remarkable as that from above. Sokol looked like a little castle of Edinburgh placed in the clouds, and a precipice on the other side of the valley presented a perpendicular stature of not less than ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton

... a Norman nave whose roof is lower than the choir roof. The choir is Early English with clerestory windows, and the easternmost bay (the retro-choir) Late Decorated; while the tower is Perpendicular. In the north window of the north transept we have a specimen of work of the nineteenth century. Thus the cathedral supplies examples of architecture from the Norman period down to ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Carlisle - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. King Eley

... the dimensions of matter it is not thus: the ternary number is determined for it not by the reason of the best, but by a geometrical necessity, because the geometricians have been able to prove that there are only three straight lines perpendicular to one another which can intersect at one and the same point. Nothing more appropriate could have been [336] chosen to show the difference there is between the moral necessity that accounts for the choice of wisdom and the brute necessity ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz

... are shops that have a certain suggestion and imitation of old-fashioned quaintness, and there are other buildings that have a tinge of the Scotch baronial hall style of architecture. Then there is the coffee-house Gothic, the pie-shop Perpendicular, the commercial Classic, the fender and fire-grate Transitional, the milk and cream Decorated, ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton

... the new palace; the modern sight of southern India. It is brimming with life; it looks like a Gothic cathedral in course of construction. Two towers, each at a guess, 150 feet high, with a wing between them, bristle with bamboo scaffolding so warped and twisted out of the perpendicular that the uprights are like old fishing rods. The extraordinary intricacy is quite fascinating, but at present it partially prevents one seeing the general proportions and effect of the building. As we see it, ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... the yawning canyon below. Generally instant death is their portion, though I recall an instance, while on an expedition against the hostile Indians thirty years ago, where a number of mules of our pack-train, loaded with ammunition, tumbled nearly five hundred feet down an almost perpendicular chasm, and yet some of them got on their feet again, and soon rejoined their companions, without having suffered ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... transparent in one point of its surface, so as to enable luminous rays to pierce it;... the cornea must correspond exactly with the opening of the socket;... behind this transparent opening there must be refracting media;... there must be a retina[24] at the extremity of the dark chamber;... perpendicular to the retina there must be an innumerable quantity of transparent cones permitting only the light directed in the line of their axes to reach the nervous membrane,"[25] etc. etc. In reply, the advocate of final causes has been invited to assume the evolutionist hypothesis. Everything is ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... a monk, who received the tonsure from St. Dominic himself. The cathedral which he has left has since his day been extended both to east and westward; and what he built he joined on to the more ancient square and perpendicular tower. The cathedral consists of an aisled, eight-bayed nave (130 by 58 feet, and 50 feet high), an aisleless choir (80 by 30 feet), with a chapter-house, sacristy, or lady chapel, to the north. The nave is almost entirely pure first-pointed. ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various

... beef bone until a few inches of its back were converted into a rude saw. The grate in the window was formed of cast-iron bars, passing perpendicularly through wrought-iron plates, bedded in the stone jambs. If one of these perpendicular bars, an inch and a half square, could be cut through, the plates might be easily bent so as to permit the egress of a man. With this end in view we cautiously began operations. Outside of the bars a piece of carpet had been ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various

... large trees arose from its sloping sides. The horizontal passage was kept in a safe state by a lining of bricks, and I walked through it into the heart of the Indian sepulchre. It was a damp, dark, weird interior; but the perpendicular shaft, which ascended to the apex, kept up an uninterrupted current of air. I found it anything but a pleasant place in which to linger, and soon retraced my steps to the boat, where I once more embarked upon the ceaseless current, and kept upon my winding ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop

... now made use of for stacking timber, fagots, bundles, and other products of the wood. It was divided from the lane by a lichen-coated wall, in which hung a pair of gates, flanked by piers out of the perpendicular, with a round white ball on ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... 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 her ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... the oak thicket, and, leaping astride, rode up the canyon, with Ring and Whitie trotting behind. An old grass-grown trail followed the course of a shallow wash where flowed a thin stream of water. The canyon was a hundred rods wide, its yellow walls were perpendicular; it had abundant sage and a scant growth of oak and pinon. For five miles it held to a comparatively straight bearing, and then began a heightening of rugged walls and a deepening of the floor. Beyond this point of sudden change in the character of the canyon Venters had ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey

... numbers: the first on Bear Island, on the slopes of some not very steep cliffs near the so-called south harbour of the island,[61] the second on the southern shore of Brandywine Bay on North-East Land, the third on ledges of the perpendicular rock-walls in the interior of Ice Fjord. At the two latter places the nests are inaccessible. On Bear Island, on the other hand, one can without very great difficulty plunder the whole colony of the dirty grey, short eggs, which are equally rounded ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... intricate puzzles of intersecting lines, sacred devices, anagrams, and, among others, the device of a bar across a tun, indicating the name of Barton. Most of the carving, however, is less elaborate and intricate than these specimens, being in a perpendicular style, and on one pattern. Before the wood grew so very dark, the beauty of the work must have been much more easily seen than now, as to particulars, though I hardly think that the general effect could have been better; ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... two of climbing brought them out upon the semicircular platform which crowns the rock. Below them on the far side was a perpendicular black cliff, a hundred and fifty feet high, with the swirling, foam-streaked river roaring past its base. The swish of the water and the low roar as it surged over the mid-stream boulders boomed through the hot, stagnant air. Far up and far down they could see ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle

... name. It ran clear and untroubled over a gentle slope, widening out until from edge to edge of the water it measured close upon forty feet. Still farther back upon either hand the sides of the canon stood in perpendicular walls thirty feet high. Above the site the walls widened gradually until they formed a pocket, flat-bottomed, half a mile wide. Still farther up the creek's course these natural walls grew steadily ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory

... theoretically drive the pin half way round, but upon its reaching the center of the outer wheel, the driving action would cease: this renders it necessary to employ two pins and two slots, but it is not essential that the latter should be perpendicular to each other. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various

... sharply to the north, taking a precipitous trail of shale that Phyllis judged to be a short cut. It was rough going, but their mountain ponies were good for anything less than a perpendicular wall. They clambered up and down like cats, as sure-footed ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine

... they were finally driven, they killed two of the Indians, and had not themselves received a scratch. They had plenty of powder, a pouch full of balls each, and two good rifles. They also had a couple of jack-rabbits for food in case of a siege, and the perpendicular walls of the front of the rock made them a natural fortification, an almost impregnable one ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... that, although the grate had contained a large fire during the night, they proceeded to examine even the very chimney, in order to discover whether escape by it were possible. But this attempt, too, was fruitless, for the chimney, built in the old fashion, rose in a perfectly perpendicular line from the hearth, to a height of nearly fourteen feet above the roof, affording in its interior scarcely the possibility of ascent, the flue being smoothly plastered, and sloping towards the top like an inverted funnel; promising, too, even if the summit were attained, owing to its great height, ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... rolled up the graded driveway Gwynne had built for the old San Francisco house that before his day had been approached by an almost perpendicular flight of wooden steps. They were late and the company had assembled: the Thorntons, Trennahans, and eight or ten young people, all of whom would be chaperoned by the married women to the dance at ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... after them, to be an almost necessary part of a liberal education; principally, doubtless, from the development which it produced in the upper half of the body, not merely to the arms, but to the chest, by raising and expanding the ribs, and to all the muscles of the torso, whether perpendicular or oblique. The elasticity and grace which it was believed to give were so much prized, that a room for ball-play, and a teacher of the art, were integral parts of every gymnasium; and the Athenians went so far as to bestow on one famous ballplayer, Aristonicus of Carystia, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... fashion, dagger-like, That may with whisp'ring, a man's eyes outpike; Some with the hammer cut, or roman T, Their Beards extravagant, reform'd must be; Some with the quadrate, some triangle fashion, Some circular, some oval in translation; Some perpendicular in longitude; Some like a thicket for their crassitude; That heights, depths, breadths, triform, square, oval, round, And rules geometrical in Beards ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews

... stitches give way and the skin tend to retract, the plan proposed on a previous page can be followed to advantage. In urinating, care must be taken not to soil the dressings; some patients are very careless about this if not warned. The penis should hang nearly perpendicular while in the act, and all dribbling should have ceased and the meatus and underneath be mopped dry with some soft cotton before raising the organ; nothing so irritates the parts, retards union, or is more offensive than ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... certainly let us prolong it; let us prolong everything; don't let us have it over—strange and beautiful as it can only be!—a moment sooner than we must." So he spoke, in the security of their intimate English, while the perpendicular imperturbable valet-de-pied, white-faced in the electric light, closed them in and then took his place on the box where the rigid liveried backs of the two men, presented through the glass, were ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James

... western gateway, built by Benedict, and though it has since been much altered, a considerable part of the original structure remains: "The western side has been faced with Perpendicular work, and an arch of that character has been built in front of the original Norman arch, above which is a very elegant arcade, the alternate arches of which have small windows within them; these light the chamber over the gateway ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips

... shelter, and rich grass for our animals, we should find clear cool springs, instead of the warm water of the Platte. On our arrival, we found the bed of a stream fifty to one hundred feet wide, sunk some thirty feet below the level of the prairie, with perpendicular banks, bordered by a fringe of green cottonwood, but not a drop of water. There were several small forks to the stream, all in the same condition. With the exception of the Platte bottom, the country seemed to be of a clay formation, dry, and perfectly devoid ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont

... 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 ledge would be in the deep sea, and ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey

... distance away, while the summit of that coast seemed as level as 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

... ill-humour on the young visitor. The discovery that it was the boss's sister who was taking up his time, suggested the advisability of a radical change of tactics. He had stooped with a frown: he returned to the perpendicular with a smile that was positively winning. It was like the sun suddenly ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse

... at the nearest end of the plate, over which the glass is slided till it lies upon the plate, having driven much of the quicksilver before it. It is then, I think, pressed upon cloths, and then set sloping to drop the superfluous mercury; the slope is daily heightened towards a perpendicular. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... thee, most noble mathematical phrase! Here is another fine mathematical expression, plainly exemplifying the action of centrifugal force. The faster the wheel turns, the greater is the velocity of the discarded particles which fly off along the line, perpendicular to the radius of the circle. The world travels very fast now; the increased velocity of the transit of earthly bodies, the rate at which they live, the multiplicity of engagements, etc., have made the social world revolve so fast that ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson

... 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 light. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... and it is an interesting sight to see them take the rush of water with their boats, and with cool intrepidity and skill direct the sweep, or steer-oar to their arrival in safety at the bottom of a rapid of almost a perpendicular fall of many feet, or through a torrent of water of a quarter of a mile or more in length. Sometimes, however the boats strike in the violence of their descent, so as to cause a fracture, and hurry the crew to pull ashore to save the cargo from ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West

... nod of the Homeric Jupiter the characteristic of majesty, inclination of the head. This hinted to him a higher elevation of the neck behind, a bolder protrusion of the front, and the increased perpendicular of the profile. To this conception Parrhasius fixed a maximum; that point from which descends the ultimate line of celestial beauty, the angle within which moves what is inferior, beyond which what is portentous. From the head conclude to the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various

... sort of watch were kept, which appeared doubtful). They swam with that perfect silence possible only to those who are thoroughly at home in the water, till they had crossed the dark moat and had reached the perpendicular wall of the Tower, which rose sheer upon the farther side — so sheer that not even the foot of mountain goat could have scaled its ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green

... a deeply interesting volume might be written on the symbolic import of the primary relations and dimensions of space—long, broad, deep, or depth; surface; upper, under, above and below, right, left, horizontal, perpendicular, oblique:—and then the order of causation, or that which gives intelligibility, and the reverse order of effects, or that which gives the conditions of actual existence! Without the higher the lower would want its intelligibility: ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge

... or perpendicular caverns in the granite or limestone pass to unknown depths; and it is up these channels that I have endeavoured to shew that the steam rises which becomes afterwards condensed and produces the warm ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... river Cayuga, or Seneca, and their united streams run into the lake Ontario, at the place where Oswego fort is situated. But this river is so rapid as to be sometimes dangerous, besides its being full of rifts and rocks; and about twelve miles on this side of Oswego there is a fall of eleven feet perpendicular, where there is consequently a postage, which however, does not exceed forty yards. From thence the passage is easy quite to Oswego. The lake Ontario, on which this fort stands, is near two hundred and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... it. The first time was August 5, 1895. They left their horses and waded up the creek, till they came to a perpendicular rock across the canyon. It was hard going, so ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough

... without further comment. The recollection is weird and extravagant. I remember being surprised at finding certain stretches of pavement perpendicular, and of trying to climb them. Still we must have got a line in the paper on Saturday night, for on Monday the bell began ringing violently before we were up. Tom either did not hear it, or was wilfully unconscious. ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine

... three, for at that moment both riders were vainly trying to check their horses in a sudden dash down one of the steepest grades, straight over a hill almost perpendicular in its slope. ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft

... it is no easy task to describe the bottom of the universe which he has now reached, Dante relates how perpendicular rocks reached up on all sides as far as he could see. He is gazing upward in silent wonder, when Virgil suddenly cautions him to beware lest he tread upon some unfortunate. Gazing down at his feet, Dante then becomes aware that he is standing on a frozen ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... sleep for ever, if you let it alone, but which is sure, like a sea-coal fire, to burst into a flame if you go on poking it. I would like to ask your lordship only two questions,'—say you, with your usual graceful attitude of adjusting your perpendicular shirt-collar, and passing your hand over the knot of your cravat, which deserves a peculiar place in the Tietania[II-A][II-5]—'only two questions—that is, Whether you do not repent the past, and whether you do not fear the future?' Very comprehensive queries, these of yours, Harry; for ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... (He disengages himself) Why should I not speak to him or to any human being who walks upright upon this oblate orange? (He points his finger) I'm not afraid of what I can talk to if I see his eye. Retaining the perpendicular. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... the ray perpendicular to the surface suffers refraction, and that some rays inclined to the surface pass without ...
— Treatise on Light • Christiaan Huygens

... aquiline, the short upper lip, the short but strong and well-hung chin: there was even the same tone of complexion and set of the eye. The gray-haired father was at once massive and keen-looking; there was a perpendicular line in his brow which when he spoke with any force of interest deepened; and the habit of ruling gave him an air of reserved authoritativeness. Rex would have seemed a vision of his father's youth, if it had been possible to imagine Mr. Gascoigne without distinct plans and ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... in the affirmative: and then another question arises; whether this House stands firm upon its ancient foundations, and is not, by time and accidents, so declined from its perpendicular as to want the hand of the wise and experienced architects of the day to set it upright again, and to prop and buttress it up for duration;—whether it continues true to the principles upon which ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke

... perfectly straight-stemmed cocoa-palm; they all have an inclination from the perpendicular more or less; perhaps that is why a cyclone has more effect on them than ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... adult female cranium are intermediate 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 ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas

... otherwise possessed an oppressively wearisome sameness. Unfortunately this breeze met me in the bows; for I had stepped my mast in the foremast, lashed it against the bottom of the top, which it will be remembered was now perpendicular, and stayed it to the mast-heads and dead-eyes of the top-mast rigging, all of which remained as when erect, though now floating on the water. I intended the fractured part of the foremast for my cut-water, and, of course, had to ware ship ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper

... 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 as usual, but took care never to ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... Hiran river[18] about ten miles from our last ground on the 22nd,[19] and came on two miles to our tents in a mango grove close to the town of Katangi,[20] and under the Vindhya range of sandstone hills, which rise almost perpendicular to the height of some eight hundred feet over the town. This range from Katangi skirts the Nerbudda valley to the north, as the Satpura range skirts it to the south; and both are of the same sandstone formation capped with basalt upon which here and ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... greediness and domestic want provoke and join in partnership, though fearful, nightly to invade the folds of some rich grazier, they, with tails depressed and lolling tongues, creep soft and slow. Meanwhile the conscious moon, now in her zenith, on their guilty heads darts perpendicular rays; nor dare they bark, though much provoked at her refulgent visage, whether seen in puddle by reflection or in sphere direct; but one surveys the region round, while the other scouts the plain, if haply to ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift

... New Vetzlar Eye-pieces, as exhibited at the Academy of Sciences in Paris. The Lenses of these Eye-pieces are so constructed that the rays of light fall nearly perpendicular to the surface of the various lenses, by which the aberration is completely removed; and a telescope so fitted gives one-third more magnifying power and light than could be obtained by the old Eye-pieces. Prices of the various sizes on ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 • Various

... about to face, there are certain points to be noted as each of them takes his place at the bat. First, his position and manner of holding his bat should be observed. If he carries it over his shoulder and in an almost perpendicular position, the chances are that he is naturally a high ball hitter and is looking for that kind of a pitch, because that is the position of the bat from which a high ball is most easily hit. If, on the contrary, he carries his bat in a more nearly horizontal position, he is ready either to "chop" ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward

... understand how each of these classes may again be divided horizontally into seven, since there are obviously many degrees of density among solids, liquids and gases. There is, however, what may be described as a perpendicular division also, and this is somewhat more difficult to comprehend, especially as great reserve is always maintained by occultists as to some of the facts which would be involved in a fuller explanation of it. Perhaps the clearest way to put what it is permissible to say on the subject ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater

... did not consist 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 that the Dyaks were honest, and even in Sarawak were never known to steal ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic

... any grandeur in their proportions. None of them are either very large or very high; but they are singularly varied in form, as if thrown together in bunches, without regard to order; some with Gothic gables, some round, some acutely angular, and all very rudely and roughly constructed, even the perpendicular lines being irregular. The walls are whitewashed, and in many places stained with age. The roofs are for the most part of earthen tiles, imburnt with strong prismatic colors, and shining like the inner surfaces of abalone shells. The domes are white, green, red, and yellow, and each church ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... There is merit in the disposition of the peplum or that portion of the draperies flung back over the left shoulder, the folds of which hang obliquely (from the left shoulder to the right side of the waist and thence downward almost to the right knee,) thus breaking up the monotony of the perpendicular lines formed by the folds of the tunic beneath. The movement of the uplifted right arm is characterized by a certain elan which, however, does not suggest violence; the carriage of the head is dignified, and so far as one ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884 • Various

... 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 sometimes ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller

... alone and the ways were, at first, as deserted as though they had never been fashioned for human usage. Between Coal City and Viper lay a distance of ten miles but they were zig-zag and semi-perpendicular miles with torrential waters to be forded. She meant to ride only about four of them before abandoning her mule for the detour on foot. But when she had left the town only a little way two horsemen came up behind her. She knew neither ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck

... surmounted by an enormous pair of short, heavy horns, is found throughout the Rocky Mountains, and resorts to the most inaccessible peaks and to the wildest and least-frequented glens. It clambers over almost perpendicular cliffs with the greatest ease and celerity, and skips from rock to rock, cropping the tender ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy

... means of a sponge, proceeding, before you leave it, all over the sheet in a horizontal direction; the second sheet is covered in a like manner. By the time the second sheet is pasted, the first one will be partially dry. The sponge is now drawn over each sheet, in succession, in a perpendicular direction in order to efface the streaks from the first sponging. If the paste drags in a slimy manner, it is too strong, and a fresh arrowroot must be prepared, because dilution only ends in failure. Why dry, the paper is rolled under ...
— Photographic Reproduction Processes • P.C. Duchochois



Words linked to "Perpendicular" :   vertical, lead line, right, orthogonal, rectangular, plumb rule, horizontal, plumb, cord, Tudor architecture, inclined, steep, orientation, sounding line, plummet, plumb line, plumb bob, oblique, Gothic architecture, gothic, upended, straight, normal, upright, face, parallel, straight line, unsloped



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