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An instrument for determining and recording the different phases, as the intensity, velocity, etc., of a muscular contraction.

Produced by natural organs, as those of the human throat, in distinction from instrumental music.

An instrument for measuring the amount which a ship heels at sea.

A small instrument of steel, sharply pointed at one end, with an eye to receive a thread, -- used in sewing. Chaucer.

Stringed instruments. Dr. W. Smith. To the chief musician on Neginoth. Ps. iv. 9heading).

A term supposed to mean, perforated wind instruments of music, as pipes or flutes. Ps. v. (heading).

An instrument for reckoning the distances or velocities of clouds.

An instrument for measuring or registering the amount of cloudiness.

An instrument for observing the clouds and their velocity.

An instrument for cutting or dissecting nerves.

An instrument for measuring the rise of water in the Nile during its periodical flood.

An instrument or register which records the presence of watchmen on their beats. Knight.

An instrument formerly used for taking the altitude of the stars, etc., at sea. I. Watts.

ht piece, or serenade. The name is now used for a certain graceful and expressive form of instrumental composition, as the nocturne for orchestra in Mendelsohn's "Midsummer-Night's Dream" music.

An instrument for determining and registering the duration of more or less complex operations of the mind. Dunglison.

A composition for nine instruments, rarely for nine voices.

al, to make them authentic, especially in foreign countries. His duties chiefly relate to instruments used in commercial transactions, such as protests of negotiable paper, ship's papers in cases of loss, damage, etc. He is generally called a notary public.

An instrument for cracking nuts.

One of the higher wind instruments in the modern orchestra, yet of great antiquity, having a penetrating pastoral quality of tone, somewhat like the clarinet in form, but more slender, and sounded by means of a double reed; a hautboy. Oboe d'amore Etym: [It., lit., oboe of love], and Oboe di caccia Etym: [It., lit., ob…

Specifically, the act of measuring, with suitable instruments, some magnitude, as the time of an occultation, with a clock; the right ascension of a star, with a transit instrument and clock; the sun's altitude, or the distance of the moon from a star, with a sextant; the temperature, with a thermometer, etc.…