sounding line

American  

noun

1. a line weighted with a lead or plummet sounding lead and bearing marks to show the length paid out, used for sounding, as at sea.

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sounding line British  

noun

1. a line marked off to indicate its length and having a sounding lead at one end. It is dropped over the side of a vessel to determine the depth of the water

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Etymology

Origin of sounding line

Middle English word dating back to 1300–50

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

sounding line

A single bleached specimen, agreeing with this description excepting in having five instead of three or four plaits on the columella, was brought up by the sounding line.

From Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 — Volume 2 by King, Phillip Parker

If a sounding line be let down from the outer edge of the reef, it will be found that the wall of coral goes down hundreds of feet like a precipice.

From The Geological Story of the Isle of Wight by Hughes, J. Cecil

Statius, perhaps, heats himself, as he proceeds, to exaggerations somewhat hyperbolical; but undoubtedly Virgil would have been too hasty, if he had condemned him to straw for one sounding line.

From Lives of the Poets, Volume 1 by Johnson, Samuel

"And these are some new breed of sounding line?"

From Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Walter, F. P.

These were the same waterways where Captain Denham, aboard the Herald, payed out 14,000 meters of sounding line without finding bottom.

From Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Walter, F. P.