Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun See
caliper .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Alternative spelling of
caliper .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun an instrument for measuring the distance between two points (often used in the plural)
- verb measure the diameter of something with calipers
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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With his left leg encased in a calliper splint, he still bustles about the stage with ferocious energy.
Richard III – review 2011
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He lugs along his lame leg, strapped in a calliper, as if it were a giant log.
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With his left leg encased in a calliper splint, he still bustles about the stage with ferocious energy.
Richard III – review 2011
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He lugs along his lame leg, strapped in a calliper, as if it were a giant log.
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With her eyepatch and her steel calliper, Tessa felt that her mother had been transformed from a glamorous extrovert into a “terrible burden” that the family had to endure with “silent suffering.”
Storyteller Donald Sturrock 2010
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It seems to me the calliper 'sees' a disc assuming same size and not a tire size.
Burning the Fat: Fueled by Fatuousness BikeSnobNYC 2009
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A beam-calliper for measuring diameters is a square of steel or iron, with two branches, one of which is fixed and the other sliding.
Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. 1866. Fourth edition. United States. Navy Dept. Bureau of Ordnance
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A small beam-calliper, with outside edges, for examining the adjusting rings and the ring-gauges.
Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. 1866. Fourth edition. United States. Navy Dept. Bureau of Ordnance
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He took the stout ash staff from the officer, and, having examined the formidable spike through a lens, drew from his pocket a steel calliper-gauge, with which he carefully measured the diameter of the spike, and the staff to which it was fixed.
John Thorndyke's Cases related by Christopher Jervis and edited by R. Austin Freeman 1902
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Having made a rough sketch of the weapon on his block, Thorndyke produced from his bag a folding rule and a delicate calliper-gauge.
John Thorndyke's Cases related by Christopher Jervis and edited by R. Austin Freeman 1902
qroqqa commented on the word calliper
Her grief was a calliper, necessary and supporting; she could not imagine walking without it.
—Julian Barnes, 'Evermore', in Cross Channel
This use of the word puzzled me. It is a figurative use of OED sense 4, new to me: A metal support for a broken or diseased leg. Also calliper splint.
July 9, 2008
fbharjo commented on the word calliper
beauty's measure
December 4, 2010