Webster
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Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary · 1913

Size

Size (sīz), n. [See Sice, and Sise.] Six.

Size (sīz), n. [OIt. sisa glue used by painters, shortened fr. assisa, fr. assidere, p. p. assiso, to make to sit, to seat, to place, L. assidere to sit down; ad + sidere to sit down, akin to sedere to sit. See Sit, v. i., and cf. Assize, Size bulk.] 1. A thin, weak glue used in various trades, as in painting, bookbinding, paper making, etc.

2. Any viscous substance, as gilder's varnish.

Size, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Sized; p. pr. & vb. n. Sizing.] To cover with size; to prepare with size.

Size, n. [Abbrev. from assize. See Assize, and cf. Size glue.] 1. A settled quantity or allowance. See Assize. [Obs.] "To scant my sizes." Shak.

2. (Univ. of Cambridge, Eng.) An allowance of food and drink from the buttery, aside from the regular dinner at commons; — corresponding to battel at Oxford.

3. Extent of superficies or volume; bulk; bigness; magnitude; as, the size of a tree or of a mast; the size of a ship or of a rock.

4. Figurative bulk; condition as to rank, ability, character, etc.; as, the office demands a man of larger size.

Men of a less size and quality. L'Estrange.

The middling or lower size of people. Swift.

5. A conventional relative measure of dimension, as for shoes, gloves, and other articles made up for sale.

6. An instrument consisting of a number of perforated gauges fastened together at one end by a rivet, — used for ascertaining the size of pearls. Knight.

Size roll, a small piese of parchment added to a roll. — Size stick, a measuring stick used by shoemakers for ascertaining the size of the foot.

Syn. — Dimension; bigness; largeness; greatness; magnitude.

Size, v. t. 1. To fix the standard of. "To size weights and measures." [R.] Bacon.

2. To adjust or arrange according to size or bulk. Specifically: (a) (Mil.) To take the height of men, in order to place them in the ranks according to their stature. (b) (Mining) To sift, as pieces of ore or metal, in order to separate the finer from the coarser parts.

3. To swell; to increase the bulk of. Beau. & Fl.

4. (Mech.) To bring or adjust anything exactly to a required dimension, as by cutting.

To size up, to estimate or ascertain the character and ability of. See 4th Size, 4. [Slang, U.S.]

We had to size up our fellow legislators. The Century.

Size, v. i. 1. To take greater size; to increase in size.

Our desires give them fashion, and so, As they wax lesser, fall, as they size, grow. Donne.

2. (Univ. of Cambridge, Eng.) To order food or drink from the buttery; hence, to enter a score, as upon the buttery book.

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Noah Porter, editor (Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913). Public domain. Text as transcribed by MICRA, Inc., from Project Gutenberg. Changed for Deep Dive Bible: Greek, which our source spelled in Latin letters, set in Greek letters; entries of one spelling merged into one article; Greek words our source left out (shown as “?”), read from the 1898 printing, from the same plates (the Library of Congress’s copy), where the place could be found with certainty. Of the others, 1,362 (a word or a single letter each) were inferred by AI from the context by the dictionary’s own rules and are marked with a wavy underline (tap or point at one to see the note); the rest, which could not be inferred with confidence, are left as “?”.