Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A ladder used for the escalade of an enemy's fortress. Besides an ordinary ladder with hooks at the upper end and similar fittings, which is the common kind, scaling-ladders have been made with braces to support them at the proper angle and wheels by which the whole structure was run close up to the walls. They are now used chiefly for descending the height of the counterscarp into the ditch.
- n. In heraldry, a bearing representing a ladder having two pointed hooks at the tops of the uprights and two pointed ferrules at the bottom.
- n. A firemen's ladder used for scaling buildings. See ladder.
Examples
“It completely conveyed the idea of a man who had been born, not to say with a silver spoon, but with a scaling-ladder, and had gone on mounting all the heights of life one after another, until now he looked, from the top of the fortifications, with the eye of a philosopher and a patron, on the people down in the trenches.”
“For all this, Shakespeare had a share in the storming of Istabulat, as will be seen; as the ghost of Bishop Adhemar, who had died at Antioch, was said to have gone before Godfrey of Boulogne's scaling-ladder when the Crusaders took Jerusalem.”
“As one by one the rest of the company ascended the scaling-ladder, they were ordered to throw themselves prone on the flat top of the wall, to await the final signal.”
“Joan, who had been all these hours in the thick of the engagement, seeing her men were losing heart, redoubled her efforts; and, helping to raise a scaling-ladder, she placed it against the parapet of one of the towers.”
“He was nearly killed on a scaling-ladder, too early put up, or too long left so.”
“Quirk ran up on the scaling-ladder to the fourth floor, hung it on the sill above, and got the boys and their sister down.”
“Every fireman nowadays must pass muster at life-saving drill, must climb to the top of any building on his scaling-ladder, slide down with a rescued comrade, or jump without hesitation from the third story into the life-net spread below.”
“A significant shaking of the little curtain at the foot of the berth showed that it was being used as a scaling-ladder.”
“Parthenopæus, one of the seven, was killed by a stone, and another, Capaneus, while furiously mounting the walls from a scaling-ladder, was slain by a thunderbolt cast by Jupiter, and fell dead to the earth.”
“We poured into the fosse through the smoke and a tempest of missiles, and Joan, shouting encouragements to her men, started to climb a scaling-ladder, when that misfortune happened which we knew was to happen -- the iron bolt from an arbaquest struck between her neck and her shoulder, and tore its way down through her armor.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘scaling-ladder’.
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Ladders
"A frame of wood, metal, or rope, usually portable, and consisting essentially of two side-pieces connected at suitable distances by cross-pieces, generally in the form of rounds or rungs, forming ...
ladder, step-ladder, standing-ladder, companion-ladder, collapsing-ladder, scaling-ladder, attic ladder, cat ladder, chicken ladder, extension ladder, trestle ladder, fixed ladder and 12 more...
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