(n.) An instrument by means of which the bolt of a lock is shot or drawn; usually, a removable metal instrument fitted to the mechanism of a particular lock and operated by turning in its place.
(n.) An instrument which is turned like a key in fastening or adjusting any mechanism; as, a watch key; a bed key, etc.
(n.) That part of an instrument or machine which serves as the means of operating it; as, a telegraph key; the keys of a pianoforte, or of a typewriter.
(n.) A position or condition which affords entrance, control, pr possession, etc.; as, the key of a line of defense; the key of a country; the key of a political situation. Hence, that which serves to unlock, open, discover, or solve something unknown or difficult; as, the key to a riddle; the key to a problem.
(n.) That part of a mechanism which serves to lock up, make fast, or adjust to position.
(n.) A piece of wood used as a wedge.
(n.) The last board of a floor when laid down.
(n.) A keystone.
(n.) That part of the plastering which is forced through between the laths and holds the rest in place.
(n.) A wedge to unite two or more pieces, or adjust their relative position; a cotter; a forelock.
(n.) A bar, pin or wedge, to secure a crank, pulley, coupling, etc., upon a shaft, and prevent relative turning; sometimes holding by friction alone, but more frequently by its resistance to shearing, being usually embedded partly in the shaft and partly in the crank, pulley, etc.
(n.) An indehiscent, one-seeded fruit furnished with a wing, as the fruit of the ash and maple; a samara; -- called also key fruit.
(n.) A family of tones whose regular members are called diatonic tones, and named key tone (or tonic) or one (or eight), mediant or three, dominant or five, subdominant or four, submediant or six, supertonic or two, and subtonic or seven. Chromatic tones are temporary members of a key, under such names as " sharp four," "flat seven," etc. Scales and tunes of every variety are made from the tones of a key.
(n.) The fundamental tone of a movement to which its modulations are referred, and with which it generally begins and ends; keynote.
(n.) Fig: The general pitch or tone of a sentence or utterance.
(v. t.) To fasten or secure firmly; to fasten or tighten with keys or wedges.
Example Sentences:
(1) Community involvement is a key element of the Primary Health Care (PHC) approach, and thus an essential topic on a course for managers of Primary Health Care programmes.
(2) A key way of regaining public trust will be reforming the system of remuneration as agreed by the G20.
(3) Instead, the White House opted for a low-key approach, publishing a blogpost profiling Trinace Edwards, a brain-tumour victim who recently discovered she was eligible for Medicaid coverage.
(4) The presence of a few key residues in the amino-terminal alpha-helix of each ligand is sufficient to confer specificity to the interaction.
(5) The key warning from the Fed chair A summary of Bernanke's hearing Earlier... MPs in London quizzed the Bank of England on Libor.
(6) "Seller reports are key to identifying bad buyers and ridding them from our marketplace," says eBay.
(7) It is suggested that the low-density lipoprotein receptors in human fetal liver may play a key role in the regulation of the serum cholesterol levels during gestation.
(8) A key component of a career program should be recognition of a nurse's needs and the program should be evaluated to determine if these needs are met.
(9) As novel antibody therapeutics are developed for different malignancies and require evaluation with cells previously uncharacterized as antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity (ADCC) targets, efficient description of key parameters of the assay system expedites the preclinical assessment.
(10) Meanwhile, Hunt has been accused of backtracking on a key recommendation in the official report into Mid Staffs.
(11) The safe motherhood initiative demands an intersectoral, collaborative approach to gynecology, family planning, and child health in which midwifery is the key element.
(12) Acetylcholinesterase is a key enzyme in cholinergic neurotransmission for hydrolyzing acetylcholine and has been shown to possess arylacylamidase activity in addition to esterase activity.
(13) If Lagarde had been placed under formal investigation in the Tapie case, it would have risked weakening her position and further embarrassing both the IMF and France by heaping more judicial worries on a key figure on the international stage.
(14) Four goals, four assists, and constant movement have been a key part of the team’s success.
(15) Mechanosensitive ion channels may play a key role in transducing vascular smooth muscle (VSM) stretch into active force development.
(16) But Abaaoud, the man thought to be a key planner for the group behind the Paris attacks, boasted to a niece that he had brought around 90 militants back to Europe with him.
(17) Key therapeutic questions are whether beta-lactams can safely replace aminoglycosides for the treatment of gram-negative pneumonia, and whether monotherapy or aminoglycoside and beta-lactam combination antibiotic treatment is superior.
(18) Teaching procedures then establish and build these key components to fluency.
(19) Doubts about Hinkley Point have deepened after a detailed report by HSBC’s energy analysts described eight key challenges to the project, which will be built by the state-backed French firm EDF and be part-financed by investment from China .
(20) The Lords will vote on three key amendments: • To exclude child benefit from the cap calculation (this would roughly halve the number of households affected).
Scale
Definition:
(n.) The dish of a balance; hence, the balance itself; an instrument or machine for weighing; as, to turn the scale; -- chiefly used in the plural when applied to the whole instrument or apparatus for weighing. Also used figuratively.
(n.) The sign or constellation Libra.
(v. t.) To weigh or measure according to a scale; to measure; also, to grade or vary according to a scale or system.
(n.) One of the small, thin, membranous, bony or horny pieces which form the covering of many fishes and reptiles, and some mammals, belonging to the dermal part of the skeleton, or dermoskeleton. See Cycloid, Ctenoid, and Ganoid.
(n.) Hence, any layer or leaf of metal or other material, resembling in size and thinness the scale of a fish; as, a scale of iron, of bone, etc.
(n.) One of the small scalelike structures covering parts of some invertebrates, as those on the wings of Lepidoptera and on the body of Thysanura; the elytra of certain annelids. See Lepidoptera.
(n.) A scale insect. (See below.)
(n.) A small appendage like a rudimentary leaf, resembling the scales of a fish in form, and often in arrangement; as, the scale of a bud, of a pine cone, and the like. The name is also given to the chaff on the stems of ferns.
(n.) The thin metallic side plate of the handle of a pocketknife. See Illust. of Pocketknife.
(n.) An incrustation deposit on the inside of a vessel in which water is heated, as a steam boiler.
(n.) The thin oxide which forms on the surface of iron forgings. It consists essentially of the magnetic oxide, Fe3O4. Also, a similar coating upon other metals.
(v. t.) To strip or clear of scale or scales; as, to scale a fish; to scale the inside of a boiler.
(v. t.) To take off in thin layers or scales, as tartar from the teeth; to pare off, as a surface.
(v. t.) To scatter; to spread.
(v. t.) To clean, as the inside of a cannon, by the explosion of a small quantity of powder.
(v. i.) To separate and come off in thin layers or laminae; as, some sandstone scales by exposure.
(v. i.) To separate; to scatter.
(n.) A ladder; a series of steps; a means of ascending.
(n.) Hence, anything graduated, especially when employed as a measure or rule, or marked by lines at regular intervals.
(n.) A mathematical instrument, consisting of a slip of wood, ivory, or metal, with one or more sets of spaces graduated and numbered on its surface, for measuring or laying off distances, etc., as in drawing, plotting, and the like. See Gunter's scale.
(n.) A series of spaces marked by lines, and representing proportionately larger distances; as, a scale of miles, yards, feet, etc., for a map or plan.
(n.) A basis for a numeral system; as, the decimal scale; the binary scale, etc.
(n.) The graduated series of all the tones, ascending or descending, from the keynote to its octave; -- called also the gamut. It may be repeated through any number of octaves. See Chromatic scale, Diatonic scale, Major scale, and Minor scale, under Chromatic, Diatonic, Major, and Minor.
(n.) Gradation; succession of ascending and descending steps and degrees; progressive series; scheme of comparative rank or order; as, a scale of being.
(n.) Relative dimensions, without difference in proportion of parts; size or degree of the parts or components in any complex thing, compared with other like things; especially, the relative proportion of the linear dimensions of the parts of a drawing, map, model, etc., to the dimensions of the corresponding parts of the object that is represented; as, a map on a scale of an inch to a mile.
(v. t.) To climb by a ladder, or as if by a ladder; to ascend by steps or by climbing; to clamber up; as, to scale the wall of a fort.
(v. i.) To lead up by steps; to ascend.
Example Sentences:
(1) The clinical usefulness of neonatal narcotic abstinence scales is reviewed, with special reference to their application in treatment.
(2) Since the start of this week, markets have been more cautious, with bond yields in Spain reaching their highest levels in four months on Tuesday amid concern about the scale of the austerity measures being imposed by the government and fears that the country might need a bailout.
(3) During the chronic phase, pain was assessed using visual analogue scales at 8 AM and 4 PM daily.
(4) Implications of the theory for hypothesis testing, theory construction, and scales of measurement are considered.
(5) The spatial spread or blur parameter of the blobs was adopted as a scale parameter.
(6) A full-scale war is unlikely but there is clear concern in Seoul about the more realistic threat of a small-scale attack on the South Korean military or a group of islands near the countries' disputed maritime border in the Yellow Sea.
(7) While both inhibitors caused thermosensitization, they did not affect the time scale for the development of thermotolerance at 42 degrees C or after acute heating at 45 degrees C. The inhibitors of poly(ADP-ribosylation) radiosensitizers and thermosensitizers may be of use in the treatment of cancer using a combined modality of radiation and hyperthermia.
(8) The move to an alliance model is not only to achieve greater scale and reach, although growing from 15 partner organisations to 50 members is not to be sniffed at.
(9) However, the effects of such large-scale calvarial repositioning on subsequent brain mass growth trajectories and compensatory cranio-facial growth changes is unclear.
(10) The usefulness of the proposed method is obvious in cases where the composition of a precipitate on LM scale is to be compared with the LM appearance of the surrounding tissue.
(11) Meanwhile Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, waiting anxiously for news of the scale of the Labour advance in his first nationwide electoral test, will urge the electorate not to be duped by the promise of a coalition mark 2, predicting sham concessions by the Conservatives .
(12) Potential revisions of the scale, as well as cautions for its use in clinical applications on its present form are discussed.
(13) High score on the hysteria scale of Middlesex Hospital Questionnaire was a risk indicator for all kinds of back pain.
(14) Assessments were made daily by patients, using visual analogue scales, of their pain levels at rest, at night and on activity, and of the limitation of their activity.
(15) Physicians and adolescents differed significantly in the ratings of all but one scale, weight.
(16) There are questions with regard to the interpretation of some of the newer content scales of the MMPI-2, whereas most clinicians feel comfortably familiar, even if not entirely satisfied, with the Wiggins Content Scales of the MMPI.
(17) Six patients showed an improvement greater than 50% on the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale.
(18) The system of automated diagnosis makes it possible to significantly increase the quality and efficacy of wide-scale prophylactic check-ups of the population.
(19) Meanwhile, the efficacy and side effects were observed clinically by using scale (BRMS, CGI and TESS).
(20) The norms are reported as "Scaled Score Equivalents of Raw Scores" for each age group and as "IQ Equivalents of Sums of Scaled Scores."