girthline

From girth +‎ line.

girthline (plural girthlines)

1. The circumference of an animal, measured under the belly and over the back; the part of the animal over which the girth fits.
   • 1988, Turrialba: Revista Interamericano de Ciencias Agricolas- volume 38:

     Linear body measurements taken on 137 ewes showed that heart girth and abdominal girthline are significantly (P < 0.01) related to ewe weight, hence size.

   • 2012, Charlene Strickland, The Basics of Western Riding, →ISBN, page 48:

     Pay close attention to the areas that the saddle will touch — withers, back, girthline, and belly.

   • 2013, G. Abel-Watters, People Your Mother Warned You About, →ISBN:

     "The Ginger Mountain" we called her. Or "The Ginger Monster" if whe was being a nuisance... not that she was vicious, she wouldn't hurt a fly, but she was insatiably nosy, had to see everything you were doing and would never stand still... Chestnut, she was, and eighteen hands if she was an inch, off the scale on the girthline measuring tape, with great big ears,and a white blaze with ginger freckles on it.

   • 2014, Bonnie Bryant, Saddle Club 63: Stable Hearts, →ISBN:

     Next Carole examined Dime's back, where the saddle rested, and his girthline, where the girth fastened around his middle.

2. A real or imaginary line around the girth of something.
   • 1921, Heywood Sumner, A Descriptive Account of Roman Pottery Sites at Sloden and Black Heath Meadow, Linwood, New Forest:

     Buff body coated with white outside ; hard; 4.05 diam.; ornamented with vertical panels of burnished lattice lines, two burnished girthlines on the bulge, and one terminating the panels of lattice lines.

   • 1928, Geographic School Bulletins, page 7:

     Breslau let out another hole in its belt recently, extending its municipal girthline to include a number of suburbs.

   • 1953, Mary Ellen Carlson, A Critical Investigation of Tailoring Techniques which Might be Effectively Employed by the Home Sewer:

     Then the lining (right side out over the sleeve) was temporarily basted to the sleeve at the girthline and above the Wrist.

   • 2015, Aglaia Marusin, Yard Lamp of Gloria: Visions That Survived the Floods, →ISBN:

     "Yet lastly, of firstly, Meeeeee......... - whichever way outstretched, it makes no difference- We all are one!" concluded one of them, somewhere- too hard to tell which one of the spheroids- for all seven resonated remarkably as but one whirling equatorial girthline of an undivided supercircumference.

3. A rope or cable that attaches around the girth of something.
   • 1899, The Century - Volume 57, page 267:

     The torpedo method was to arrange ten torpedoes on the port side, placed outside abreast the bulkheads and the cargo-hatches so as to give the maximum sinking effect to a breach opened up by each, the torpedoes being carrie by a fore-and-aft belt-line extending along the outside from end to end about twelve feet below water, each torpedo, in addition, having a hogging-line, or girthline, extending around underneath the keel, for holding the torpedo in its place.

   • 1998, Vitorino Nemésio, Francisco Cota Fagundes, Stormy Isles: An Azorean Tale, page 309:

     As there was no time to lose and noticing the Granary's launch tied with a girthline to a half-buried cannon, with a killick suspended from the stern reel cable, he quickly gained the small dock, untied the line, and jumped into the little vessel, which lurched to one side like a nutshell.