Noun: dial
Sample Sentences
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Holonyms: (often holonymous) instrument, gauge
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The dial on the dashboard showed the car was nearly out of gas.
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Turn the dial to Radio 4: my favourite show is on!
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His hands were too fat to operate the dial on the telephone.
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“Well, all I can say is that if yer don't take yer dial outer the road I'll bloomin' well take an' bounce a gibber off yer crust.” [1918, Norman Lindsay, The Magic Pudding, page 90:]
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At the sound of the old familiar voice he spun around with something of the agility of a cat on hot bricks, and I saw that his dial, usually cheerful, was contorted with anguish, as if he had swallowed a bad oyster. [1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter IX, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC:]
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Old Mona Lisa would have looked like a sour lemon beside Angel Day on the rare days she put a smile on her dial, laughing with her friends when some new man was in town. [2006, Alexis Wright, Carpentaria, Giramondo, published 2012, page 137:]
Nouns inflected like dial
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
The original meaning was 'sundial' and/or 'clock dial'; from Middle English diall, from Middle French dyal, from Latin diālis (“daily, concerning the day”), because of its use in telling the time of day, from Latin diēs (“day”). Compare Spanish dial and día (“day”). See: Middle English Nouns '
diall', Latin Nouns '
diālis', Latin Nouns '
diēs', Spanish Nouns '
dial'.