Definition of "line"

The atmosphere in flaming sparkles flew; / And where the burning wheels / Eddied above the mountain’s loftiest peak / Was traced a line of lightning.

1816, Percy Shelley, The Daemon of the World

So this was my future home, I thought! […] Backed by towering hills, the but faintly discernible purple line of the French boundary off to the southwest, a sky of palest Gobelin flecked with fat, fleecy little clouds, it in truth looked a dear little city; the city of one's dreams.

1908, W[illiam] B[lair] M[orton] Ferguson, chapter IV, in Zollenstein, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company

For their present position, he drew an inverted V. Then he drew a line and on either side he inscribed landmarks, ridges, passes. At the other end he drew a number of inverted Vs to represent the Arapaho village.

2009, Jory Sherman, Sidewinder

Then we hunted up a place close by to hide the canoe in, amongst the thick willows. We took some fish off of the lines and set them again, and begun to get ready for dinner.

1884, Mark Twain, chapter 9, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

[…] he found preparing the hook far less fun than dangling the line in the water and waiting for a fish to come along. Finally succeeding, he beamed a smile up at his father, then lowered his line into the swift-moving Sippora.

2007, Robert Newcomb, A March Into Darkness, page 29

Use fabric or nursery grade webbing around stakes and trunk, loosely tying the line to the tree about 6 inches below the point where the tree bounces back in your hand when you grab the trunk.

2008, Joshua Plunkett, Jeanne K. Hanson, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Trees and Shrubs, page 164

There is the possible hazard of an oil spill in case the line breaks but normal pipeline maintenance and safety measures, etc., are designed to prevent large or long continued spillage.

1973, Final Environmental Statement for the Geothermal Leasing Program, US department of the interior

To the end of the metal fuel line (where it fits into the carb) you attach a four-foot length of flexible fuel line.

1981 October, Popular Science, volume 219, number 4, page 113

She feels guilty for pampering him, and salves her conscience by bossily ordering him to go and fetch the clothes from the line[.]

1985, Joan Morrison, Share House Blues, Boolarong Publications, page 26

This description of the old front line, as it was when the Battle of the Somme began, may some day be of use. […] It is hoped that this description of the line will be followed by an account of our people's share in the battle.

1917, John Masefield, The Old Front Line

Eden stretch'd her Line / From Auran Eastward to the Royal Towrs / Of great Seleucia,

1674, John Milton, Paradise Lost, volume IV

The carpenter stretcheth out his rule; he marketh it out with a line; he fitteth it with planes, and he marketh it out with the compass, and maketh it after the figure of a man, according to the beauty of a man; that it may remain in the house.

1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], Isaiah 44:13

The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage.

1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], Psalms 16:6

He tipples palmistry, and dines On all her fortune-telling lines.

1651, John Cleveland, “Fuscara”, in George Saintsbury, editor, Minor poets of the Caroline period, published 1921)

Though on his brow were graven lines austere.

1812-1818, Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

I muttered somethin' underneath my breath / She studied the lines on my face / I must admit I felt a little uneasy / When she bent down to tie the laces of my shoe / Tangled up in blue.

1975, “Tangled Up in Blue”, in Bob Dylan (music), Blood on the Tracks

I mean, the lines of my body are as well drawn as his.

c. 1609, William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Cymbeline

By subtly altering classical ballet steps, she extended the line of the dancer's body and introduced a new kind of athleticism and verve to ballet.

2002, Mark C. Carnes, Invisible Giants, page 220

A band of brothers gathering round me, made, / Although unarmed, a steadfast front […] now the line / Of war extended, to our rallying cry / As myriads flocked in love and brotherhood to die.

1817, Percy Shelley, The Revolt of Islam

Students and the instructor sing the harmony line while the instructor plays the melody line on the piano.

2015, Mícheál Houlahan, Philip Tacka, Kodály in the Third Grade Classroom

Of his lineage am I, and his offspring / By very line,

1387, Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

They hail'd him father to a line of kings.

c. 1604, William Shakespeare, Macbeth

Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun.

1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], Psalms 19:4

[T]he rest of the history of the Old Testament derives the succession of the line of David to the Captivity, of which line was to spring the restorer of the kingdom of God […].

1651, Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

He is uncommonly powerful in his own line; but it is not the line of a first-rate man.

1835, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, edited by Henry Nelson Coleridge, Specimens of the table talk of the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge, page 45

Omar has challenged Elliott Abrams’s record in Latin America, taken a firm line against Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, and advocated for—wait for it—the two-state solution for Israel and Palestine (even though the headlines have focused on her expressing support for the right to boycott as a tactic).

2019 September 10, Jonathan Guyer, The American Prospect‎, number Fall 2019

She's got the best line on Hickey. Maybe she knows a way to put the heart back into him.

1916 March 11, Charles E. Van Loan, “His Folks”, in Saturday Evening Post‎

Withof estimates that the hair of the beard grows one line (French) in the course of a week, let us call it one line and a half (Engish); this would amount to six inches and a half yearly...

1847, Sir Erasmus Wilson, On Diseases of the Skin. Second edition

Advertising rates, line contract, less than 500 agate lines, 12 cents per line; 1,000 to 2,000 lines, 7 cents; 5,000 to 10,000 lines, 5 cents.

1912, Miscellaneous Series, numbers 7-11, page 25

At the same time, however, for calculation in the metric system, one metre is taken as the unit for the length of the conductor, one metre per second as the unit velocity, and one line per square centimetre as the unit of field density.

1898, Alfred Eugene Wiener, Practical calculation of dynamo-electric machines, page 47

The density will now be only one quarter of a line per square centimetre, and therefore a unit pole placed at a distance of 2 centimetres from a similar pole, will only be acted on with a force of one quarter of a dyne, […].

1903, William Richard Kelsey, Continuous current dynamos and motors and their control, page 39

The Paris Congress of 1900 adopted the name gauss as that of the unit of intensity of field, one gauss signifying one line per square centimetre. The same Congress also named one line as one maxwell, but everybody still uses the term line.

1904, Silvanus Phillips Thompson, Dynamo-electric machinery: a manual for students of electrotechniques: Volume 1, Part 1, page 74

A magnetic flux is said to have a density of one line per square centimeter when it exerts on a unit north pole a force of one dyne.

1909, Henry Metcalf Hobart, Electricity: a text book designed in particular for engineering, page 58

Thus, for example, in the line of Quarte, the direct thrust is parried by dropping the point under the adversary's blade and circling upwards, throwing off the attack in the opposite line (that of Tierce), and upon the direct thrust in the line of Tierce, by a similar action throwing off the attack in the opposite line (that of Quarte).

1861, George Chapman, Foil Practice, with a Review of the Art of Fencing, page 12

Buy white line, go a long way / Either up your nose or through your vein / With nothing to gain except killing your brain

1983, “White Lines (Don't Do It)”, performed by Grandmaster Melle Mel

"Let's have a line." He pulled a razor blade from his pocket and scooped out a couple of mounds. He laid out seven thick lines on a mirror. He rolled up a fifty-dollar note and snorted a line.

1998, Luke Davis, Candy

"Yes, we did. We both did a line, but maybe close to a half gram of crystal meth. I did a line and he did a way much bigger line."

2004, Burl Barer, Broken Doll, page 64

Snorting it was a much slower blast off and a longer less intense buzz, that was much easier to function on. A few minutes after you snort a line you can feel the niacin rush coming up your back and washing over your head, […].

2007, D. C. Fuller, Meth Monster: Crankin' Thru Life a Look Into the Abyss, page 474

"You know that scene in Lady and the Tramp where they're slurping up both ends of a noodle and end up kissing?" "Y-yes..." "It was like that, but with a line of cocaine instead of pasta."

2013, Jeph Jacques, Questionable Content (webcomic), Number 2386: The Thin White Line

Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun.

1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], Psalms 19:4

Line and new repair our towns of war With men of courage and with means defendant.

1599, William Shakespeare, Henry V, ii 4

[…] the crowd that lined the road to watch us as we wound slowly on.

1899, Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing, We and the world: a book for boys, page 19

The mountains which have lined the road on the left here cross it and the road makes a very sharp ascent, going over them.

1909, Road Notes : Cuba, United States War Department, Second Section, General Staff, No. 16, page 359

Knee-high garden lamps lined the path; Jim was careful to stay in their pools. Assuming he was being watched, the last thing he wanted to do was give them any reason to chase after him in the dark.

2009, Jon Fasman, The Unpossessed City

All the pictures fairest lined Are but black to Rosalind.

1598, William Shakespeare, As You Like It, iii 2

De young folks say ’tain’t stylish to lin’ ’um no mo’; / Dat deys got edikashun, an’ dey wants us all to know / Dey like to hab dar singin’-books a-holin’ fore dar eyes, / An’ sing de hymns right straight along “to manshuns in de skies”.

1897, Daniel Webster Davis, “De Linin’ ub de Hymns”, quoted in Jerma A. Jackson, “Exuberance or Restraint: Music and Religion after Reconstruction”, in Singing in My Soul: Black Gospel Music in a Secular Age, Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2004, ISBN 978-0-8078-2860-1, page 15

‘[W]hy do you all sing hymns that way?’ / ‘Linin’?’ she asked. / ‘Is that what it is?’ / ‘Yeah, it’s called linin’. They’ve done it that way as long as I can remember.’ / Jem said it looked like they could save the collection money for a year and get some hymn-books. / Calpurnia laughed. ‘Wouldn’t do any good,’ she said. ‘They can’t read.’

1960 July 11, Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Philadelphia, Pa., New York, N.Y.: J[oshua] B[allinger] Lippincott Company

By the 1840s a typical hush-harbor meeting of African Americans had become “an amalgam of African initiation practices and camp meeting Christianity,” which included “bits of Christian doctrine and ritual” with a “focus on African initiation and ritual events.” […] A lined hymn or a “sperchul” provided the opening music. In “linin’,” also called “deaconin’,” an elder would sing two lines of a hymnbook song, perhaps one of Watts’s hymns or an older one, which would be repeated by the group of worshipers in “wailing cadences.”

1999, Janet Duitsman Cornelius, “‘Cords of Love’: Religious Cultures Intertwined, yet Separate”, in Slave Missions and the Black Church in the Antebellum South, Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, page 10

And clothed all in Garments made of line.

1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book V, Canto VII, VI

To spin 2 lb. of line.

a. 1818, J. C. Atkinson (ed.), North Riding Record Society (publisher), Quarter sessions records VIII p. 52 (compilation of historical records published in 1890, as quoted in the English Dialect Dictionary in 1902)

Which proved fatal to the line or flax crops.

1837, S. Hick, Everett, section 195

1641.—14 yards of femble cloth, 12s. ; 8 yards of linen, 6s. 8d. ; 20 yards of harden, 10s. ; 5 linen sheets, 1l. ; 7 linen pillow bears, 8s. ; 2 femble sheets and a line hard sheet, 10s. ; 3 linen towels, 4s. ; 6 lin curtains and a vallance, 12s. ; […]

1858, Journal of the Statistical Society of London, page 409

T'burring o' t'woo' an' line wheels,

1869, Borrowdale, Dixon, section 2

Even in an era when individuality in dress is a cult, his clothes were noticeable. He was wearing a hard hat of the low round kind favoured by hunting men, and with it a black duffle-coat lined with white.

1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 6, in The China Governess‎

[…] such books are always close back—ie, the leather cover is always glued or pasted to the bare back of the book. After books have been lined the bands are put on if the style of binding admits of this operation.

1891, English mechanics and the world of science, volume 52, page 306

Then again line the back, again bringing the paper a little further in than the second lining, and repeat the operation according to what you think the weight and size of the book demands in extra strength, […]

1895, The British Printer, volume VIII, page 94

because the charge amounteth mostly very high for any one man's purse, except lined beyond ordinary, to reach unto

1602, Richard Carew, edited by Thomas Tonkin, Carew's Survey of Cornwall‎, published 1811, page 34

A bitch lined by a mangy dog is very liable to produce mangy puppies, and the progeny of a mangy bitch is certain to become affected some time or other.

1825, A Lawson, The Modern Farrier

Pliny states that the inhabitants of India take pleasure in having their dog bitches lined by the wild tigers, and to facilitate this union, they are in the habit of tieing them when in heat out in the woods, so that the male tigers may visit them.

1855, William Youatt, The Dog

Bedlamite was a black dog, and although it may be safely asserted that he lined upwards of 100 bitches of all colours, red, white, and blue, all his produce were black.

1868 September, The Country Gentleman's Magazine, page 292