Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. An old measure of length in France, containing 6 French feet, or 1.949 meters, equivalent to 6.395 English feet.
Wiktionary
- n. a former French unit of length, corresponding to about 1.949 metres
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. An old measure of length in France, containing six French feet, or about 6.3946 French feet.
Etymologies
- From French toise. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“During the founding of the Metric System, less than 20 years before the date of this work, the 'toise' was assigned a value of 1.949 meters, or a little over two yards.”
“(Transcriber's Note: The 'toise' was introduced by Charlemagne in 790; it originally represented the distance between the fingertips of a man with outstretched arms, and is thus the same as the British 'fathom'.”
“Kitteh, if yoo hav warmf an noms, a kleen littre boks, an toise, if tytee wytee Dood is kind to yoo, yur wai ahed ov teh HoamLess Kitteh Boiz!”
Dere’s reely - Lolcats 'n' Funny Pictures of Cats - I Can Has Cheezburger?
“Mai kittehs nawt be lyking teh shawp toise too much, tehy lubs teh laive pleytings moar, so wii bee fyndin teh reel-laive ded mauses unda teh frij!”
no, no, NO! Mai mausie wuz - Lolcats 'n' Funny Pictures of Cats - I Can Has Cheezburger?
“But only if we can get to within three hundred and fifty toise?”
“His broad, round back made him look like a tor - toise, an impression that his huge shoulders, deep chest, and narrow hips and waist did nothing to dispel.”
“There with the cat, waiting and wishing I could sleep, I rediscover my once-had-beens and should-have-dones, the tor-toise shell of pain and past all men drag with them forever.”
“French pilots still used the old-dashioned toise to measure depths, and the toise was slightly greater than the English fathom.”
“These six mortars, the largest that had ever been made, were six inches thick, used forty-five pounds of powder at a charge, and threw bombs fifteen hundred toises [A toise is six feet, and a league is three miles] in the air, and a league and a half out to sea, each bomb thrown costing the state three hundred francs.”
Complete Project Gutenberg Collection of Memoirs of Napoleon
“Il voit les masses deau, les toise et les mesure, 15”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘toise’.
-
Meters
knitmeter, butyrometer, cathetometer, handsometer, meter maid, spammeter, ceilometer, dilatometer, bdellometer, bolo-tie-meter, fathommeter, meet-and-greet-meter and 117 more...
-
Tristram Shandy
souse, meet, sententious, propound, boot, casuistry, avoirdupois, akimbo, disport, lenity, succussation, sweetbread and 197 more...
-
Pendulums
"In mech., a body so suspended from a fixed point as to move to and fro by the alternate action of gravity and its acquired energy of motion. The time occupied by a single oscillation or swing is c...
pendulum, pendulums, Pendulum, Pendulums, simple pendulum, conical pendulum, simple gravity pe..., Foucault pendulum, Foucault's Pendulum, gridiron pendulum, sound-pendulum, compensation pend... and 33 more...
-
English Weights and Measures
Most of these are names of weights and measures in use before 1500, gleaned from household accounts of English estates and colleges.
pondus, clove, wey, charrus, pisa, sum, seam, petra, fatt, peck, quarter, skep and 49 more...
-
looked up
Words I've come across while reading and looked up in the dictionary.
deesis, pendentive, revetment, aedicule, stemma, patera, ephod, entrepot, corbel, exedra, volute, archivolt and 1408 more...
-
The Measure of Man
Unusual, arcane, or obscure units of measure
cable, cabot, bushel, cade, caliper, callipic cycle, metonic cycle, cunit, air watt, ale gallon, allergy unit, amber and 228 more...
-
Historical Military Terms of Interest
Many (if not all) of these terms were selected from A pocket dictionary, for military officers, containing a definition of all the tactical terms now in use, with other matter belonging to the art ...
zig-zags, yeoman, xerxes, xeiff, xenophon, worm, watch-word, windage, wheeling, wad-hock, wadding, volley and 242 more...
-
rduke's Words
misguggle, ken, sere, etiolated, gelid, digladiate, popinjay, bathykolpian, conglaciation, hyperborean, callipygian, vagile and 1253 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for toise.
fbharjo toise of peru
Can you fathom that?
Feb 9, 2013
chained_bear "TOISE, fr. French a measure of six feet." (citation in list description) Oct 9, 2008