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Cubit   /kjˈubɪt/   Listen
Cubit

noun
1.
An ancient unit of length based on the length of the forearm.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Cubit" Quotes from Famous Books



... more numerous missiles. Lastly, in order that his own men might heap their weapons upon the enemy, without receiving any wounds themselves, he perforated the wall from the top to the bottom with a great number of loop-holes, about a cubit in diameter, through which some with arrows, others with scorpions of moderate size, assailed the enemy without being seen. Certain ships which came nearer to the walls in order to get within the range of the engines, he placed upon their sterns, raising up their prows by throwing upon them an ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius

... have come from this beautiful corner of the earth of course is interesting, but the honor of being poet-laureate to the King is a shifting honor, depending upon the poet. No title can ever really honor a man, although a man may honor a title, and no King by taking thought can add a cubit to a subject's stature. The man is what he is. Southey succeeded the poet Pye, who ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... crimes were of daily occurrence; perhaps sometimes multiplied by rumour, but often unheard of and unrecorded. The perils of the stockmen were constant: many of them were repeatedly wounded; and one, named Cubit, was nine times speared, and yet survived. Death assumed new forms daily: the poet of the Iliad did not describe more numerous varieties, in ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... to this astronomer, whose lectures so profoundly taught lessons of humility to the created, and which were so replete with silent eulogies on the power of the Creator! What was it to me whether I were a modest plant, of half a cubit in stature, or the proudest oak of the forest—man or vegetable? My duty was clearly to glorify the dread Being who had produced all these marvels, and to fulfil my time in worship, praise and contentment. It mattered ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper

... ornament, which was turned upwards, and which was often sustained by gold or silver chains tied to the knee [g]. The ecclesiastics took exception at this ornament, which they said was an attempt to belie the scripture, where it is affirmed, that no man can add a cubit to his stature; and they declaimed against it with great vehemence, nay, assembled some synods, who absolutely condemned it. But, such are the strange contradictions in human nature! though the clergy, at that time, could overturn thrones, and had authority sufficient to send above a million of ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume

... more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... conditions which allowed him to play the role of a Croesus in the fancy of love-sick maids, he could not deny that he found it a pleasant thing to be the object of such tender rivalry. It seemed to add a cubit to his height and two to his self-esteem. He revelled in the sense of his desirability and watched with amusement the innocent manoeuvres by which his fair entertainers checkmated each other, and ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various

... cubit Seems to cry out, "How shall that Claribel Measure us back to Naples? Keep in Tunis, 250 And let Sebastian wake." Say, this were death That now hath seized them; why, they were no worse Than now they are. There be that can ...
— The Tempest - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... secure, as he thought, against all blandishments, his will steeled to break down all resistance. He had come armed with an instrument of torture worse than the thumb-screw, worse than the pulleys which attempt the miracle of adding a cubit to the stature, worse than the brazier of live coals brought close to the naked soles of the feet,—an instrument which, instead of trifling with the nerves, would clutch all the nerve-centres and the heart itself in its gripe, and hold them until it got its answer, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... subject from the disposal of a garbage-can to that of a corpse. As almost every one with claims to respectability, and certainly every one without any, keeps a consul, it follows that there is one consul per superficial meter, arshin, or cubit of Ezekiel within the city. And since every consul is zealous for the honour of his country and not at all above annoying the English on general ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... is not at all hours alike recipient. 'Nobody ever wished it longer';—nor the moon rounder, he might have added. Why, 'tis the perfectness and completeness of it which makes us imagine that not a line could be added to it, or diminished from it, with advantage. Would we have a cubit added to the stature of the Medicean Venus? Do ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... the life more than food, and the body than raiment? (26)Behold the birds of the air, that they sow not, nor reap, nor gather into barns; and your heavenly Father feeds them. Are ye not much better than they? (27)And which of you by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature[6:27]? (28)And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They toil not, nor spin; (29)and I say to you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. (30)And if God so clothes the grass of ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various

... comfortably and obscurely merging in a petty constellation of Alma Mater, was to become a bright particular star, and dwell apart. The avowed liberalism of Robert may, however, have done more in reality to shock Sir Henry, than his inability to add a cubit to his stature. It is pleasant to know, that the 'admiral and general at sea' never outgrew a tenderness for literature—his first-love, despite the rebuff of his advances. Even in the busiest turmoil of a life teeming ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various

... irritably we desire to do so, because it simply is not in our power to effect it. We talk about the power of the will, but no effort of will can obliterate the life that we have lived, or add a cubit to our stature; we cannot abrogate any law of nature, or destroy a single atom of matter. What it seems that we can do with the will is to make a certain choice, to select a certain line, to combine existing forces, to use them within very small limits. We can oblige ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson

... Lecture: here, it is only necessary for the reader to know that the Greater Pthah more or less represents the formative power of order and measurement: he always stands on a four-square pedestal, 'the Egyptian cubit, metaphorically used as the hieroglyphic for truth;' his limbs are bound together, to signify fixed stability, as of a pillar; he has a measuring-rod in his hand; and at Philae, is represented as holding an egg on a potter's wheel; but I do not know if ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... Columbus on his second voyage alludes to another method of using the herb. They make a powder of the leaves, which "they take through a cane half a cubit long; one end of this they place in the nose, and the other upon the powder, and so draw it up, which purges them ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... the workmen had raised their structures a cubit in the daytime, two cubits more were added in the night. Vathek fancied that even invisible matter showed a forwardness to subserve his designs, and his pride arrived at its height when, having ascended for the first time the eleven thousand ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various

... Mediterranean Sea. A galley may be 180 or 190 spans long—Furttenbach measures a ship by palmi, which varied from nine to ten inches in different places in Italy,—say 150 feet, the length of an old seventy-four frigate, but with hardly a fifth of its cubit contents—and its greatest beam is 25 spans broad. The one engraved on p. 37 is evidently an admiral's galley of the Knights of Malta. She carries two masts—the albero maestro or mainmast, and the trinchetto, or foremast, each with a great lateen sail. The Genoese ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole

... thorn-bush could be found only in the house of Haman, which had to be demolished in order to obtain it. (184) The cross was tall enough for Haman and his ten sons to be hanged upon it. It was planted three cubits deep in the ground, each of the victims required three cubits space in length, one cubit space was left vacant between the feet of the one above and the head of the one below, and the youngest son, Vaizatha, had his feet four cubits from the ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... we have a translation said to be made from the latter by Hermapion, an Egyptian priest. In order to take away its pagan character from the religious ceremony with which the yearly rise of the Nile wras celebrated in Alexandria, Constantine removed the sacred cubit from the temple of Serapis to one of the Christian churches; and nothwithstanding the gloomy forebodings of the people, the Nile rose as usual, and the clergy afterwards celebrated the time of its overflow as ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... is Terrentius Varro doing!" cried Decius suddenly, and the three turned at his voice. A nodding forest of crests, red and black, rising a cubit above the uncovered helmets of the legionaries, seemed to fill the eastern plain and extend almost to where the Adriatic beat upon the shingle. "Look at his front! Look at how closely the maniples are crushed together! Gods! they are almost ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne

... also found the rhinoceros, an animal less than the elephant, but larger than the buffalo. It has a horn upon its nose, about a cubit in length; this horn is solid, and cleft through the middle. The rhinoceros fights with the elephant, runs his horn into his belly, and carries him off upon his head; but the blood and the fat of the elephant running into his eyes and making him blind, ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various

... intended to be loyal to Hellas,—to strive valiantly for her freedom,—and now! Was the Nemesis coming upon him, not in one great clap, but stealthily, finger by finger, cubit by cubit, until his soul's price was to be utterly paid? Was this the beginning of the recompense for ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... worlds in myriads glisten—larger, lovelier than our own— This has been, and this still shall be, here as there, in sun or star; These things are to be and will be, those things were to be and are. Man in man's imperfect nature is by imperfection taught: Add one cubit to your stature if you can by ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... discovered of irritating the aristocratic type of steam launch, was to mistake them for a beanfeast, and ask them if they were Messrs. Cubit's lot or the Bermondsey Good Templars, and could they lend ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome

... ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits. A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it. And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... were of silver, but their bases were of brass: they resembled the sharp ends of spears, and were of brass, fixed into the ground. Cords were also put through the rings, and were tied at their farther ends to brass nails of a cubit long, which, at every pillar, were driven into the floor, and would keep the tabernacle from being shaken by the violence of winds; but a curtain of fine soft linen went round all the pillars, and hung down in a flowing and loose manner from their chapiters, and enclosed the whole space, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... appointing the two kinds of rope to be used apart from one another, but assigning to each bridge two ropes of white flax and four of the papyrus ropes. The thickness and beauty of make was the same for both, but the flaxen ropes were heavier in proportion, 38 and of this rope a cubit weighed one talent. When the passage was bridged over, they sawed up logs of wood, and making them equal in length to the breadth of the bridge they laid them above the stretched ropes, and having set them thus in order they again fastened them above. 39 When this was done, ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus

... and Pallas! I wanted but a cubit of it, or at most a fathom, and thou art pulling it out ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... eu'ry cubit Seemes to cry out, how shall that Claribell Measure vs backe to Naples? keepe in Tunis, And let Sebastian wake. Say, this were death That now hath seiz'd them, why they were no worse Then now they are: ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... know what feats I have done in times past at Bologna, when I used to go after the women with my comrades, you would be lost in amazement. God's faith! on one of those nights there was one of them, a poor sickly creature she was too, and stood not a cubit in height, who would not come with us; so first I treated her to many a good cuff, and then I took her up by main force, and carried her well-nigh as far as a cross-bow will send a bolt, and so caused her, willy-nilly, come with us. And on another occasion ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio

... sign of that energy and of that will's eventual fortunes. Dramatic terror and dramatic humour both depend on contrasting the natural pregnancy of a passion with its conscious intent. Everything in human life is ominous, even the voluntary acts. We cannot, by taking thought, add a cubit to our stature, but we may build up a world without meaning it. Man is as full of potentiality as he is of impotence. A will that represents many active forces, and is skilful in divination and augury, may long boast to be almighty without being ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... for advancement; and, when grace is begun, it is sweet to grow in grace. If we had power to add cubit by cubit to our stature, we should have far to grow ere our head should strike the heavens; and in bearing meekly, and acting righteously, and living purely, we have room enough to expand: it will be long ere we have done all, ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... by pushing against the mast. He is like a drowning man trying to lift himself out of the water by pulling at the hair of his own head. Christ held up this method almost to ridicule when He said: "Which of you by taking thought can add a cubit to his stature?" The one redeeming feature of the self-sufficient method is this—that those who try it find out almost at once that it will not gain the goal. The ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond

... Souls 720 In prison under Judgements imminent: But all in vain: which when he saw, he ceas'd Contending, and remov'd his Tents farr off; Then from the Mountain hewing Timber tall, Began to build a Vessel of huge bulk, Measur'd by Cubit, length, & breadth, and highth, Smeard round with Pitch, and in the side a dore Contriv'd, and of provisions laid in large For Man and Beast: when loe a wonder strange! Of everie Beast, and Bird, and Insect small 730 Came seavens, and pairs, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... for Measures. A Rian is a Cubit, which is with them from the bone on the inside of the Elbow to the tip of the fourth Finger. A Waddo rian is the Carpenters Rule. It is as much as will reach from one Elbow to the other, the Thumbs touching one the other at the tops, and ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox

... Sepulchre. The Grand Khan a tributary Prince. Argosies of gold, silk and spices, sailing steady, sailing fast over a waterway unblocked by Mahound and his soldans. All Europe burning bright, rising a rich Queen. Holy Church with another cubit to her stature. Christopherus Columbus, the Discoverer, the Enricher, the Deliverer! Queen Isabella, and on her cheeks a flush of gratitude; all the Spanish court bowing low. All the friends, the kindred, all so blessed! Sons, brothers; Genoa, and Domenico ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston

... annoint it through all thy might. Three hundred cubits it shall be long, And so of breadth to make it strong, Of height so, then must thou fonge,[21] Thus measure it about. One window work though thy might; One cubit of length and breadth make it, Upon the side a door shall fit For to come in and out. Eating-places thou make also, Three roofed chambers, one or two: For with water I think to stow[22] Man that I can make. ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous

... can't have candles because of the insects. I sleep outside till about six a.m., and then go indoors till dark again. This fortnight is the hottest time. To-day the drop falls into the Nile at its source, and it will now rise fast and cool the country. It has risen one cubit, and the water is green; next month it will be blood colour. My cough has been a little troublesome again, I suppose from the Simoom. The tooth does not ache now. Alhamdulillah! for I rather dreaded the muzeyinn (barber) with his tongs, who is the sole dentist here. I was amused ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... what art makes each of us agree with himself about the comparative length of the span and of the cubit? Does not ...
— Alcibiades I • (may be spurious) Plato

... almost to ridicule when He said, "Which of you by taking thought can add a cubit to his stature?" Put down that method forever as ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond

... thither saw fishes of an hundred and two hundred cubits long, that occasion more fear than hurt; for they are so fearful, that they will fly upon the rattling of two sticks or boards. I saw likewise other fishes about a cubit in length, that had ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous

... Wamba, "your reverences must hold on this path till you come to a sunken cross, of which scarce a cubit's length remains above ground; then take the path to the left, for there are four which meet at Sunken Cross, and I trust your reverences will obtain shelter before the storm ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... The braccio, (arm, cubit) is an Italian measure which varies in length, not only in different parts of Italy, but also according to the thing measured. In Parma, for example, the braccio for measuring silk is 23 inches, for woolens and cottons 25 and a fraction, while that for roads and buildings is 21 only. In ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner

... he never was quite sure about his next meal, a raven always flew in from somewhere just in the nick of time. Minna came, and her sister, and his home was made comfortable for him; he had many friends; he rapidly became recognized as many a cubit taller than any other musician in the parish. The opera and some orchestral concerts were placed under his direction; and Hans von Buelow came to serve his apprenticeship as conductor under him, very largely at the theatre. Wagner mentions a performance of the Flying Dutchman, which afforded ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman

... tool or industry, for art or science. These birth-gifts are quantities, fixed and unalterable. No heart-rendings can change the two-talent nature into a ten-talent man. No agony of effort can add a cubit to the stature. The eagle flies over the chasm as easily as an ant crawls over the crack in the ground. Shakespeare writes Hamlet as easily as Tupper wrote his tales. Once an oak, always an oak. Care and culture can thicken the girth of the tree, but no degree ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis

... as a beautiful woman of thoughtful and benign aspect and regal bearing; a diadem crowns her majestic brow, and she bears in her hand a rudder, balance, and cubit;—fitting emblems of the manner in which she guides, weighs, and measures all human events. She is also sometimes seen with a wheel, to symbolize the rapidity with which she executes justice. As the avenger of evil she appears ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens

... five associates, as it had been of their predecessors for more than nine hundred years. As maple was the sacred wood in the Roman ritual, maple only was used for the holy fire. The size of the pieces used and their shape was also a matter of immemorial ordinance. Each piece was about a cubit long, about the length of the forearm of an average adult, measured from elbow to finger-tips. Each piece must be wedge-shaped, with the bark on the rounded side and the other two sides meeting at a sharp edge where had been the heart of the trunk or ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White

... span is ascribed to the highest Lord, although omnipresent with reference to his abiding within the heart; just as to ether (space) the measure of a cubit is ascribed with reference to the joint of a bamboo. For, on the one hand, the measure of a span cannot be ascribed directly to the highest Self which exceeds all measure, and, on the other hand, it has been shown that none but the highest Lord can be meant here, on account of the term ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut

... shell were not continued those nerves of life which give the consciousness of the body, and there was therefore no reaction from it of those feelings of weakness and need which, to such a man as Cosmo, soon reveal the fact that he is not lord of his body, that he cannot add to it one cubit, or make one hair white or black, and must therefore leave the care of it to him who made it, he had to learn in other ways that his castle of stone was God's also. His truth and humility and love had not yet reached to the quickening of the idea of the old house with the feeling that God ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... of Z-li [3], And the cypresses of Hsin-f [3], Were cut down and measured, With the cubit line and the eight cubits' line. The projecting beams of pine were made very large; The grand inner apartments rose vast. Splendid look the new temples, The work of Hs-sze, Very wide and large, Answering to the ...
— The Shih King • James Legge

... own sex. Certainly no thought of possible future commands dawned on Roy. It was her pride in his achievement, so characteristically expressed that flattered his incipient masculine vanity and added a cubit to his stature. He knew now what he meant to be when he grew up. Not a painter, or a soldier or a ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... evils; but they are the least that flow from a neglect of the maxim which stands at the head of my paper. Perpend it well, reader; and bear ever in mind that, in our desires, as in our corporeal structure, it is not given to man to add a cubit to his stature. I am very tired; so "dismiss me—enough." New ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various

... water and pasturage were to be found. (3.) There is decisive evidence that this region was once better watered than it is now, and more fruitful. The planks of acacia-wood, the shittim-wood, which were employed in the construction of the tabernacle, were a cubit and a half in width; that is, in English measure, something more than two and a half feet. No acacia-trees of this size are now found in that region. The cutting away of the primitive forests seems to have been followed, as elsewhere, by a decrease ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... a later stage become coolies, going to market in the morning, fetching ice and soda-water, and so on, until they mature into hamals and mussals themselves. Like all larvae, dog-boys eat voraciously and grow rapidly. You engage a little fellow about a cubit high, and for a time he does not seem to change at all; then one morning you notice that his legs have come out half a yard or more from his pantaloons, and soon your bright little page is a gawky, long-limbed lout, who comes to ask for leave that he may go to his country and get married. ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... and eighty. Such is the size of the city of Babylon, and it had a magnificence greater than all other cities of which we have knowledge. First there runs round it a trench deep and broad and full of water; then a wall fifty royal cubits in thickness and two hundred cubits in height: now the royal cubit is larger by three fingers than the common ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus

... surpassed every city of which we have any knowledge. It is surrounded by a trench, deep, wide, and full of water. Within this is a wall, the width of which is fifty royal cubits, and its height two hundred cubits.[6] The royal cubit exceeds the common measure by ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various

... the ark gave especial trouble. Origen had dealt with it by suggesting that the cubit was six times greater than had been supposed. Bede explained Noah's ability to complete so large a vessel by supposing that he worked upon it during a hundred years; and, as to the provision of food taken into it, he declared that there ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... brave words. When I compare them with the general tone of Free Soil men in Congress, I distrust the atmosphere of Washington and of politics. These men move about, Sauls and Goliaths among us, taller by many a cubit. There they lose port and stature. Mr. Sumner's speech in the Senate unsays no part of his Faneuil Hall pledge. But, though discussing the same topic, no one would gather from any word or argument that the speaker ever took such ground as he did in Faneuil Hall. It is all through, the law, ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various

... money, keeping our papers in order, and persisting at work amid distractions. But the bad habits and the good are already fixed in our nervous system, and in physiology also possession is nine tenths of the law. We may intend to change, but by taking thought alone we cannot add a cubit to our stature. Reflection can do no more than point the way we should go. For unless the wrong actions are systematically and repeatedly refrained from, and the proper ones made habitual, thinking remains merely an impotent summary of what can be done. ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... darling! You overrate me, dear, but that does me good: makes me work harder. What a pity it is, May, that one can't add a cubit to his stature. I'd be a giant then.... But never fear; it'll be all right. You wouldn't wish me, I'm sure, to run away from a conflict I have provoked; but now I must see my father about those debts, and then we'll have a drive, or perhaps you'd go with me to him. You could wait in the buggy ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris

... pile was laid, And pierced by Roderick's ready blade. Patient the sickening victim eyed The life-blood ebb in crimson tide Down his clogged beard and shaggy limb, Till darkness glazed his eyeballs dim. The grisly priest, with murmuring prayer, A slender crosslet framed with care, A cubit's length in measure due; The shaft and limbs were rods of yew, Whose parents in Inch-Cailliach wave Their shadows o'er Clan-Alpine's grave, And, answering Lomond's breezes deep, Soothe many a chieftain's endless sleep. The Cross thus formed he held on high, With ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... He took the censer in his right hand, and the spoon in his left. He proceeded in the Sanctuary until he came between the two vails dividing between the holy and the holy of holies, and intermediate was a cubit. R. Joseph said, "there was one vail only," as He said, "the vail is the division for you between the Holy and the Holy of Holies" (Exod. xxvi. 33). Outside it was looped up southward, inside northward. He proceeded between them till he reached the north. When he reached the north his ...
— Hebrew Literature

... fig-tree, growing out of the wall between the cellar and us, is fantastic enough in its branches, yet that other which I see yonder, bent down and forced to crawl along the grass by the prepotency of the young shapely walnut-tree, is much more so. It forms a seat, about a cubit above the ground, level and ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... the sons of the king was an idiot, precipitate and heedless in all his actions. Adikam, the second son, was a cunning and clever man, and versed in all the wisdom of Egypt, but ungainly in appearance, fleshy and short of stature; his height was a cubit and a space, and his beard flowed down ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... no man can by care taking (as the Scripture saith) add a cubit to his stature, in this little model of a man's body; but in the great frame of kingdoms and commonwealths, it is in the power of princes or estates, to add amplitude and greatness to their kingdoms; for by introducing such ordinances, constitutions, and customs, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon

... unresting, trackless, all Our joys and griefs befall; In thy full sight our secret things go on; Step after step, thy wrath Follows the caitiff's path, And in his triumph breaks his vile neck bone. To all alike, thou meetest out their due, Cubit for cubit, ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... diverse corporations. Some, more industrious and equipped with better tools, remove the pith from the dry stem and thus obtain a vertical cylindrical gallery, the length of which may be nearly a cubit. This sheath is next divided, by partitions, into more or less numerous storeys, each of which forms the cell of a larva. Others, less well-endowed with strength and implements, avail themselves of the old galleries of other ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... century before the conquest, an injunction that the one measure, which was kept at Winchester, should be observed throughout the realm. Most nations have regulated the standard of measures of length by comparison with the parts of the human body; as the palm, the hand, the span, the foot, the cubit, the ell, (ulna, or arm) the pace, and the fathom. But, as these are of different dimensions in men of different proportions, our antient historians[r] inform us, that a new standard of longitudinal measure was ascertained by king Henry the first; who commanded that the ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone



Words linked to "Cubit" :   linear measure, linear unit



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