[-ING2.] That tapers; taper.
a. 1625. Nomenclator Navalis (Harl. MS. 2301), s.v., I have seene in Flemings the Top saile Tapering.
1665. Phil. Trans., I. 35. Insects with large Heads and small tapering Bodies.
1787. A. Clarke, in Life, iv. (1863), 33. After the tapering thread of life is spun out.
1807. Hutton, Course Math., II. 267. A piece of tapering timber.
1893. Liddon, etc., Life Pusey, I. i. 5. Long hands and tapering fingers.
Hence Taperingly adv., in a tapering manner.
1809. Curtis’s Bot. Mag., XXIX. 1172. The leaves of ornata not widening into oblong-lanceolate lamina from a somewhat taperingly contracted one as in those of gigantea.
1863. J. F. Waller, An Evening in the Bay of Naples, ii., in Poems (ed. 2), 72.
| The sulphury smoke mounts taperingly | |
| From Vesuvio’s cratered cone, | |
| Whose azure brow is tranquil now | |
| As he sleeps on his lava throne. |
1878. H. S. Wilson, Alp. Ascents, iii. 92. As a champagne bottle has to be taperingly elongated.
1883. C. Robson, in Science Gossip, May, 106. The posterior portion of the abdomen beyond the cornua prolonged taperingly considerably.
