Diameter
[daɪ'æmɪtə] or [daɪ'æmɪtɚ]
Definition
(noun.) the length of a straight line passing through the center of a circle and connecting two points on the circumference.
(noun.) a straight line connecting the center of a circle with two points on its perimeter (or the center of a sphere with two points on its surface).
Checked by Angelique--From WordNet
Definition
(n.) Any right line passing through the center of a figure or body, as a circle, conic section, sphere, cube, etc., and terminated by the opposite boundaries; a straight line which bisects a system of parallel chords drawn in a curve.
(n.) A diametral plane.
(n.) The length of a straight line through the center of an object from side to side; width; thickness; as, the diameter of a tree or rock.
(n.) The distance through the lower part of the shaft of a column, used as a standard measure for all parts of the order. See Module.
Checker: Marge
Synonyms and Synonymous
n. Distance through the centre (as of a circle).
Edited by Guthrie
Examples
- The large and powerful engines on the Great Western Railway have, however, only two driving wheels, which are 8 feet in diameter. Frederick C. Bakewell. Great Facts.
- In this a vacuum is maintained by a condenser, the vapors passing from the pan to the condenser through the great curved pipe rising from the top, which pipe is five feet in diameter. Edward W. Byrn. The Progress of Invention in the Nineteenth Century.
- The tube is 52 feet long, 4 feet diameter in the middle, tapering to a little over 3 feet at the ends. Edward W. Byrn. The Progress of Invention in the Nineteenth Century.
- The entire community surrounded us, leaving a clear space about one hundred feet in diameter for our battle. Edgar Rice Burroughs. A Princess of Mars.
- In the ventilator should be four or six tin tubes 1/2 inch in diameter and 6 inches long. William K. David. Secrets of Wise Men, Chemists and Great Physicians.
- The wire in each disc is 1,140 feet long; and the total length of wire in the regenerator is 41? miles, or equal to the surface of four steam boilers, each 40 feet long and 4 feet diameter. Frederick C. Bakewell. Great Facts.
- The magnets used in this river work were three and one-half feet in diameter. Various. The Wonder Book of Knowledge.
- In drilling 22-calibers, for example, the length of the hole must be from 100 to 125 times the diameter of the drill. Various. The Wonder Book of Knowledge.
- The _Tsar-Pooschka_, the great bronze gun of Moscow, cast in 1586, was even larger, and had a bore 36 inches in diameter. Edward W. Byrn. The Progress of Invention in the Nineteenth Century.
- It was only one substantial dish of meat (fit for the plain condition of a husbandman,) in a dish of about four-and-twenty feet diameter. Jonathan Swift. Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World.
- It consisted of five magnetic needles, ranged side by side on a horizontal line that formed the diameter of a rhomb. Frederick C. Bakewell. Great Facts.
- The statement that a gun has a length of 45 calibers, for example, implies that the gun is forty-five times the bore’s diameter. Various. The Wonder Book of Knowledge.
- It is a mass of flaming matter, having a diameter of 866,000 miles. H. G. Wells. The Outline of History_Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind.
- Each tube is 1/4 inch in diameter by 4 1/8 inches long, add has eight of the reinforcing rings. Frank Lewis Dyer. Edison, His Life and Inventions.
- And yet when I was in Sunday School I thought they were sixty thousand miles in diameter. Mark Twain. The Innocents Abroad.
- These wells are now made with larger diameters than formerly, and altogether their construction has been rendered much more easy in modern times. Various. The Wonder Book of Knowledge.
- This circle is of various diameters, sometimes very large. Benjamin Franklin. Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin.
- A few typical examples of the latter are given in Figs. 176 and 177, multiplied 1,000 diameters. Edward W. Byrn. The Progress of Invention in the Nineteenth Century.
- Whitney’s cotton-gin was made of two cylinders of different diameters, mounted in a strong wooden frame. Rupert S. Holland. Historic Inventions.
- The stroke is 42 inches, and the diameters of the cylinders are 34?, 48, and 75 inches, respectively. Edward W. Byrn. The Progress of Invention in the Nineteenth Century.
Checked by Jean