SPINDLE • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Spindle

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/spˈɪndəl/ Listen

noun

Spindle n.

1.

The long, round, slender rod or pin in spinning wheels by which the thread is twisted, and on which, when twisted, it is wound; also, the pin on which the bobbin is held in a spinning machine, or in the shuttle of a loom.

2.

A slender rod or pin on which anything turns; an axis; as, the spindle of a vane. Specifically:

(a)

(Mach.) The shaft, mandrel, or arbor, in a machine tool, as a lathe or drilling machine, etc., which causes the work to revolve, or carries a tool or center, etc.

(b)

(Mach.) The vertical rod on which the runner of a grinding mill turns.

(c)

(Founding) A shaft or pipe on which a core of sand is formed.

3.

The fusee of a watch.

4.

A long and slender stalk resembling a spindle.

5.

A yarn measure containing, in cotton yarn, 15,120 yards; in linen yarn, 14,400 yards.

6.

(Geom.) A solid generated by the revolution of a curved line about its base or double ordinate or chord.

7.

(Zool.)

(a)

Any marine univalve shell of the genus Rostellaria; called also spindle stromb.

(b)

Any marine gastropod of the genus Fusus.

Dead spindle (Mach.), a spindle in a machine tool that does not revolve; the spindle of the tailstock of a lathe.

Live spindle (Mach.), the revolving spindle of a machine tool; the spindle of the headstock of a turning lathe.

Spindle shell. (Zool.) See Spindle, 7. above.

Spindle side, the female side in descent; in the female line; opposed to spear side. (R.) "King Lycaon, grandson, by the spindle side, of Oceanus."

Spindle tree (Bot.), any shrub or tree of the genus Eunymus. The wood of Eunymus Europaeus was used for spindles and skewers. See Prickwood.

verb

Spindle v. i. (past & past part. spindled; pres. part. spindling) To shoot or grow into a long, slender stalk or body; to become disproportionately tall and slender. "It has begun to spindle into overintellectuality."

See images of 'Spindle'

Etymology of 'Spindle'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Spindle" Quotes from Famous Books

... for the propagation of rotative oscillations is shown to the left of Fig. 3, and consists of a cylinder, A, mounted on a tubular spindle, and which is set into circular oscillations around its axis by the little vibrating membrane, C, which is attached to the axis of the cylinder by a little crank and connecting rod shown in detail in Fig. 4. This membrane is set into vibration by a rapidly pulsating ...

— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various

... covered with rushes; though in some instances the walls were of brick, the use of which they seem to have learned from the Peruvians, as they used the Peruvian term tica for that material. From the wool of the Chilihueques they manufactured cloth for their apparel, using the spindle and distaff for spinning this wool into yarn, and two different kinds of looms for weaving the yarn into cloth. One of these, called guregue, is not very unlike the ordinary loom of Europe; but the other is vertical or upright, ...

— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr

... of Orchomena, the Saphria of the Patraeans, Aphia of AEgina, Bendis of Thrace, and Stymphalia with the leg of a bird. Triopas, in place of three eyeballs, has nothing more than three orbits. Erichthonius, with spindle-shanks, crawls like ...

— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert

... and speaketh not anything." During this pause, the "conveyor" is told "to get the fig-leaves ready." Then Lucifer is ordered to "come out of the serpent and creep on his belly to hell;" Adam and Eve receive the curse, and depart out of Paradise, "showing a spindle and distaff"—no badly-conceived emblem of the labour to which they are henceforth doomed. And ...

— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins

... a Maxwell disc, and is nothing more than a circle of firm cardboard, pierced with a central hole to fit the spindle of a rotary motor, and with a radial slit from rim to centre, so that another disc may be slid over the first to cover any desired fraction of its surface. Let us paint one of these discs with Venetian red and the other ...

— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell

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