scance
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Forms: form: scances
Senses: examples: text: As for the state of Antwerp, the enemy has fortified so strongly that their ships cannot possibly remove him; for he bends half his force to defend the scance of Calloo, upon the Fladers' side of the bridge, and the other half on the brabant side, which is full of scances, so that one hundred men can defend it from five hundred.
ref: 1584, Joseph Stevenson, Calendar of State Papers: Foreign Series, of the Reign of Elizabeth, page 406:
text: We are making up fast—almost within shot now. The scance, too, is a good hundred yards off.
ref: 1898, The American Magazine, volume 45, page 596:
text: It was by that time dark but proceeded to build scances and prepare to hold the position on a front of about half a mile.
ref: 1901, Sessional Papers, volume 35, number 12, page 50:
text: While engaged in building a “scance” (an erection of stones in crescent formation to afford cover), amid the constant sniping of the enemy, and while in a stooping position a Mauser bullet struck him under the left eye at the infra-orbital foramen, passing through the antrum and making its exit drove before it the second bicuspid tooth, splitting the first bicuspid.
ref: 1902, British Journal of Dental Science and Prosthetics:
glosses: A crescent-shaped structure of stones built to afford cover in battle.
examples: text: In silk an' sattin ilk ane scances,
An gauze beside,
They've loupit o'er a' sort o' fences
Wi perfect pride.
ref: 1813, Ebenezer Picken, Miscellaneous Poems, Songs, Etc, page 128:
text: And look at the scance that comes frae his bonny een.
ref: 1897, George Stirling's Heritage: A Story of Chequered Love, page 34:
text: If you are still hovering on the outskirts of our charmed brotherhood, I wish I could describe for you the smoothness—the mildness—the benevolent after-glow on your skin—the incomparable luxury of a scance with Mennen's.
ref: 1910, Dominion Medical Monthly and Ontario Medical Journal:
glosses: A gleam or glow.
examples: text: The succeeding scances may even be prolonged to twenty or twenty-five minutes, but it will then be necessary to use light massage to the part exposed to the electric rays.
ref: 1901, Dental Hints, volume 3, page 8:
text: Ordinarily a temperature from 200 to 350 degrees is sufficient, with scances from thirty to sixty minutes, followed, when there is stasis or a weak circulation, by the “Morton wave current.”
ref: 1910, International Journal of Medicine and Surgery, volume 23, page 280:
text: Guillermin believes it better to bring about a temporary suspension of ovarian function by radiotherapy and cites two cases; in one by four treatments in four days; in the other seventeen treatments in the period of one year. The scances were of five minutes for each ovary.
ref: 1921, Iowa Medical Society, Journal of the Iowa Medical Society, volume 11, page 327:
topics: medicine
sciences
glosses: A dose of radiation.
examples: text: The members of the club were all eager to debate such matters as poetry, art, religion, music, and natural science with open minds. From these creative scances were born many of the ideas that contributed to the Industrial Revolution, as well as its financial sponsoring.
ref: 2012, Ebbe Almqvist, History of Industrial Gases, →ISBN:
glosses: A social discussion.