English Wikipedia has an article on:

line

Wikipedia

English Wikipedia has an article on:

Line (unit)

Wikipedia

• enPR: līn, IPA^(key): /laɪn/

  • Audio (US):

    (file)

• (General Australian) IPA^(key): /lɑɪn/, [lɑe̯n]

  • Audio (General Australian):

    (file)

• Rhymes: -aɪn

From Middle English line, lyne, from Old English līne (“line, cable, rope, hawser, series, row, rule, direction”), from Proto-West Germanic *līnā, from Proto-Germanic *līnǭ (“line, rope, flaxen cord, thread”), from Proto-Germanic *līną (“flax, linen”), from Proto-Indo-European *līno- (“flax”).

Influenced in Middle English by Middle French ligne (“line”), from Latin linea. More at linen.

The oldest sense of the word is “rope, cord, thread”; from this the senses “path”, “continuous mark” were derived.

line (plural lines)

1. A path through two or more points (compare ‘segment’); a continuous mark, including as made by a pen; any path, curved or straight.

   The arrow descended in a curved line.

   1. (geometry) An infinitely extending one-dimensional figure that has no curvature; one that has length but not breadth or thickness.

      Synonym: straight line

   2. (geometry, informal) A line segment; a continuous finite segment of such a figure.

      Synonym: line segment

   3. (graph theory) An edge of a graph.
   4. (geography) A circle of latitude or of longitude, as represented on a map.
   5. (geography, 'the line' or 'equinoctial line') The equator.
   6. (music) One of the straight horizontal and parallel prolonged strokes on and between which the notes are placed.
   7. (cricket) The horizontal path of a ball towards the batsman (see also length).
   8. (soccer) The goal line.
      • 2011 October 1, Clive Lindsay, “Kilmarnock 1-2 St Johnstone”, in BBC Sport:

        St Johnstone's Liam Craig had to clear off the line before Steven Anderson sent a looping header into his own net for the equaliser on 36 minutes.

   9. (automotive) A particular path taken by a vehicle when driving a bend or corner in the road.
      • 2021 February, The Road Ahead, Brisbane, page 10, column 3:

        "I guess it's like race cars - if you get the right line you can come out at top speed."

2. A rope, cord, string, or thread, of any thickness.
3. A hose or pipe, of any size.

   a brake line

   the main water line to the house

4. Direction, path.

   the line of sight

   the line of vision

5. A procession, either physical or conceptual, which results from the application or effect of a given rationale or other controlling principles of belief, opinion, practice, or phenomenon.

   In order to maintain a consistency in the defense, I will follow the line established by attorney Jacobs of allowing the prosecution to suggest motives, and then refuting them.

6. The wire connecting one telegraphic station with another, a telephone or internet cable between two points: a telephone or network connection.

   I tried to make a call, but the line was dead.

   a dedicated line;  a shared line

   Please speak up, the line is very faint.

7. A clothesline.

   We need to take the clothes off the line. The news reported a front is coming in from the east, and we can expect heavy rain and maybe hail.

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

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

8. A letter, a written form of communication.

   Synonyms: epistle, letter, note

   Drop me a line.

9. A connected series of public conveyances, as a roadbed or railway track; and hence, an established arrangement for forwarding merchandise, etc.

   a line of stages

   an express line

10. (especially military) A trench or rampart, or the non-physical demarcation of the extent of the territory occupied by specified forces.
11. The exterior limit of a figure or territory: a boundary, contour, or outline; a demarcation.
    • 1674, John Milton, Paradise Lost, volume IV:

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

12. A long tape or ribbon marked with units for measuring; a tape measure.
13. (obsolete) A measuring line or cord.
    • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Isaiah 44:13:

      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.

14. That which was measured by a line, such as a field or any piece of land set apart; hence, allotted place of abode.
    • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Psalms 16:6:

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

16. A threadlike crease or wrinkle marking the face, hand, or body; hence, a characteristic mark.
17. Lineament; feature; figure (of one's body).
19. A more-or-less straight sequence of people, objects, etc., either arranged as a queue or column and often waiting to be processed or dealt with, or arranged abreast of one another in a row (and contrasted with a column), as in a military formation. [from mid-16th c.]

    Synonyms: (Canada) lineup, (UK, Ireland) queue

    get in line

    The line forms on the right.

    There is a line of houses.

    • 1817, Percy Shelley, The Revolt of Islam:

      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.

    1. (military, nautical) Ellipsis of line of battle.
20. (military) The regular infantry of an army, as distinguished from militia, guards, volunteer corps, cavalry, artillery, etc.
21. (music) A series of notes forming a certain part (such as the bass or melody) of a greater work.
    • 2015, Mícheál Houlahan, Philip Tacka, Kodály in the Third Grade Classroom:

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

23. A series or succession of ancestors or descendants of a given person; a family or race; compare lineage.
24. A small amount of text. Specifically:
    1. A written or printed row of letters, words, numbers, or other text, especially a row of words extending across a page or column, or a blank in place of such text.

       Synonym: row

       The answer to the comprehension question can be found in the third line of the accompanying text.

    2. A verse (in poetry).
       • 1609, William Shakespeare, Sonnet 71:

         Nay if you read this line, remember not, / The hand that writ it.

    3. A sentence of dialogue, especially [from late 19th c.] in a play, movie, or the like.

       He was perfecting his pickup lines for use at the bar.

       "It is what it is" was one of his more annoying lines.

       • 2010, Alison Hodge, Actor training, page 138:

         Anyone who has worked with Littlewood will wince at the memory of going over single lines time and time again, each actor in turn speaking the line until the valid intonation, phasing and emphasis emerged.

    4. A lie or exaggeration, especially one told to gain another's approval or prevent losing it.

       Don't feed me a line!

25. Course of conduct, thought, occupation, or policy; method of argument; department of industry, trade, or intellectual activity. [from earlier 17th c.]
    • 1835, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, edited by Henry Nelson Coleridge, Specimens of the table talk of the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge, page 45:

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

26. The official, stated position (or set of positions) of an individual or group, particularly a political or religious faction. [from later 19th c.]

    Remember, your answers must match the party line.

27. (slang) Information about or understanding of something. (Mostly restricted to the expressions get a line on, have a line on, and give a line on.)

    Judy gave me a line on a lawyer who's supposed to be the best in the business.

    • 1916 March 11, Charles E. Van Loan, “His Folks”, in Saturday Evening Post‎^[1]:

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

28. A set of products or services sold by a business, or by extension, the business itself. [from early 19th c.]

    line of business, product line

    How many buses does the line have?

    The airline is in danger of bankruptcy.

    • 1890, Illinois State Dairymen's Association, Annual Report (volume 16, page 21)

      Have nothing to do with snide goods; let it be known throughout the world that the farmers and dairymen, yea, and those engaged in other industries in the great State of Illinois, produce only the best of everything in their lines, and we will be the last to feel the effects of over-production.

29. (stock exchange) A number of shares taken by a jobber.
30. Any of an ill-defined set of units of length, varying according to the country, discipline, industry, and date of application, commonly with no indication of the intended magnitude:
    • 1847, Sir Erasmus Wilson, On Diseases of the Skin. Second edition:

      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...

    1. (historical) A tsarist-era Russian unit of measure, approximately equal to one tenth of an English inch, used especially when measuring the calibre of firearms.
    2. One twelfth of an inch.
       • 1883, Alfred Swaine Taylor, Thomas Stevenson, The principles and practice of medical jurisprudence:

         The cut is measured in thickness from a quarter of a line to a line and a half (a line is one-twelfth of an inch).

    3. One sixteenth of an inch.
    4. One fortieth of an inch.
       • 1922, “Statement of James Turner, Representing Universal Button Fastening Co., Detriot, Mich.”, in Hearings Before the Committee on Finance, United States Senate, page 5337:

         In case any of the committee do not understand what is meant by a rate per line, I may say that buttons, being very small, are not measured by the foot or inch, but by the line, a line being one-fortieth of an inch. For example, that is a 27-line button […].

31. (advertising) Short for agate line.
    • 1912, Miscellaneous Series, numbers 7-11, page 25:

      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.

32. (historical) A maxwell, a unit of magnetic flux.
33. (baseball, slang, 1800s, with "the") The batter's box.
34. (fencing) The position in which the fencers hold their swords.

    Synonym: line of engagement

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

      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).

35. (engineering) Proper relative position or adjustment (of parts, not as to design or proportion, but with reference to smooth working).

    the engine is in line / out of line

36. A small path-shaped portion or serving of a powdery illegal drug, especially cocaine.
37. (obsolete) Instruction; doctrine.
    • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Psalms 19:4:

      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.

38. (genetics) A population of cells derived from a single cell and containing the same genetic makeup.
39. (perfusion line) a set composed of a spike, a drip chamber, a clamp, a Y-injection site, a three-way stopcock and a catheter.
40. (ice hockey) A group of forwards that play together.
41. (Australian rules football) A set of positions in a team which play in a similar position on the field; in a traditional team, consisting of three players and acting as one of six such sets in the team.
42. (medicine, colloquial) A vascular catheter.

    patient had a line inserted

    line sepsis

• 1387, Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales:

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

• c. 1604, William Shakespeare, Macbeth:

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

• c. 1609, William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Cymbeline:

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

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

  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.

• 1651, Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan:

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

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

• 1789, Olaudah Equiano, chapter 1, in The Interesting Narrative, volume I:

  Benin […] is situated nearly under the line, and extends along the coast about 170 miles […] .

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

  Though on his brow were graven lines austere.

• 1816, Percy Shelley, The Daemon of the World:

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

• 1851, Herman Melville, chapter 54, in Moby Dick:

  She [a ship called Town-Ho] was somewhere to the northward of the Line.

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

  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.

• c. 300 BC, Euclid, Elements, Book I, Definition ii; translated in 1885, Casey, John (ed. and trans.), The First Six Books of the Elements of Euclid […] , London: Longman, Green, & Co, third edition; republished by Project Gutenberg on April 14, 2007, ebook #21076, updated July 18, 2022, page 2.

  A line is length without breadth.

• 1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 111:

  And all this, too, in a country only twelve degrees south of the line; I wonder the men worked as well and as steadily as they did, for I never saw Europeans work in any tropical country as our Port Darwin labourers did.

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

  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.

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

  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, […].

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

  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.

• 1906, Reports of military observers to the armies in Manchuria, page 261:

  The arm of the Russian infantry is the three-line rifle, model 1891 (caliber 0.299 inch) […].

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

  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.

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

  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.

• 1917, John Masefield, The Old Front Line:

  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.

• 1918, Norman Lindsay, The Magic Pudding, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 52:

  "Ho, aboard the Salt Junk Sarah,
  Rollin" home across the line,
  The Bo'sun collared the Captain's hat
  And threw it in the brine."

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

  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.

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

  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.

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

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

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

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

• 1989 December 17, Laura Briggs, “Abortion Activists Stop Operation Rescue”, in Gay Community News, volume 17, number 23, page 3:

  Hundreds of pro-choice demonstrators held the line to prevent members of the anti-choice group Operation Rescue OR) from blockading the doors to the Repro women's health clinic […] representing a major shift in pro-choice strategy.

• 1991 April 6, Steve Rose, “A Human Drama”, in Gay Community News, page 5:

  The way in which other progressives and liberals in our activist community buy into Washington's overwhelmingly pro-Israeli line.

• 1998, Luke Davis, Candy:

  "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.

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

  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.

• 2004, Burl Barer, Broken Doll, page 64:

  "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."

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

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

  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, […].

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

  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.

• 2009, Jory Sherman, Sidewinder:

  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.

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

  "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, The United States in the First World War: An Encyclopedia, →ISBN, page 561:

  A “line” was a unit of measurement used in tsarist Russia and equal to about a tenth of an inch. The 3-line rifle, therefore, had a bore of three lines, or approximately .30 caliber.

• 2019 September 10, Jonathan Guyer, The American Prospect‎^[2], number Fall 2019:

  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).

• (geometry) curve, point, segment
• lineage
• lineal
• linear

• → Scottish Gaelic: loidhne