sounding lead
Americannoun
noun
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
A sounding lead, used to measure the sea's depth, was also found.
From Reuters ● Sep. 20, 2016
Some SO miles from the coast of Japan, the Nipponese man-of-war Manchu dropped its sounding lead.
From Time Magazine Archive
![]()
Her superstructure swept away, she had gone down like a sounding lead in deep water.
From Time Magazine Archive
![]()
"Sir, at this moment we have 3,508 fathoms of line out, and the ball which draws the sounding lead has not yet touched the bottom; for if so, it would have come up of itself."
From From the Earth to the Moon; and, Round the Moon by Verne, Jules
Waist-held in the chains and soused in the fifty-foot-high spray, Joe Byng eyed his sounding lead that swung like a pendulum below him, and named it sacrilege.
From Told in the East by Mundy, Talbot
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.