Crossword clues for plimsoll
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
"mark on the hull of a British ship showing how deeply she may be loaded," 1881, from Samuel Plimsoll (1824-1898), M.P. for Derby and advocate of shipping reforms (which were embodied in the Merchant Shipping Act of 1876). Sense extended 1907 to "rubber-soled canvas shoe" (equivalent of American English sneakers) because the band around the shoes that holds the two parts together reminded people of a ship's Plimsoll line; sense perhaps reinforced by sound association with sole (which sometimes influenced the spelling to plimsole). The name is of Huguenot origin.
Wiktionary
n. (context British English) A rubber-soled lace-up canvas shoe for sports or onboard ships; a precursor of trainers.
Wikipedia
Plimsoll may refer to:
- Plimsoll (surname)
- The plimsoll symbol ⦵ (⦵ or o) that is used as a superscript in the notation of thermodynamics to indicate an arbitrarily chosen non-zero reference point (" standard state").
- Plimsoll line or Plimsoll mark on a ship's hull, named after Samuel Plimsoll
- Plimsoll shoe, which is named for the shoe's horizontal lines, which resemble the Plimsoll line
Plimsoll is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
- James Plimsoll (1917–1987), Australian diplomat and governor of Tasmania
- John Plimsoll, South African cricketer
- Samuel Plimsoll, British politician
Usage examples of "plimsoll".
The line of ducks bobbed along past him and round the back and came bobbing round again, and each time he took aim he had only to think of Charlie and his swollen bruise-coloured face, or the scarlet sock and plimsoll shining wet on the shed floor.
And when he went dry, the encouragement he received from his agent, together with gloomy financial prognostications from Plimsoll, made him keep working, flogging out the words, despite his grumpy complaints that nothing flowed naturally and easily, as it had done in the old days.
He found that he could reduce his work rate to only three or four hours a day, easily half of which was dictating answers to letters and requests into his tape recorder, while Plimsoll cleaned up the latest pages of whatever tale he was working on.
Many of his guests had met the cool and proper Miss Plimsoll in passing, and they found hilarious the image of Matthew Griswald, Iron Man of Letters, reduced in his waning years to grinding away on the razor-sharp pelvis of Miss Plimsoll.
Miss Plimsoll said, in a tone so expressionless that Matthew could take it for arch.
Then he tossed the papers aside and looked again at Miss Plimsoll in frank appraisal.
The Plimsoll mark is painted on the vessel to indicate how much cargo she should carry.
The vessel was crammed till its sides bulged, it was loaded down in utter defiance of the Plimsoll law, with Rollos and Clarences and Dwights and Twombleys who had known and golfed and ridden and driven and motored and swum and danced with Ann for years.
Some were still in the stream, loaded with wheat to the Plimsoll mark, ready to depart with the next tide.
But their mother had hesitated and then, striking them to stone, gone over to the boy, who wore plimsolls without laces.
Karl immediately kicked off his plimsolls, and unlatched a broad bunk which had been folded flat against the wall.
The decking was damp below her rubber-soled plimsolls, and they had already picked up a surprising turn of speed.
Niah bent down and pulled off his plimsolls and socks, and as he opened a weary eye, she tugged at his shirt and, with some assistance from Tyndall, dragged it off.
The caftan covered her from neck to ankles, and hid the bag of instruments, masks, and plimsolls she carried.
The door opened, and out came an old boy of about fifty or sixty wearing a football T-shirt, a pair of shorts, plimsolls and a fag in his mouth.