Nail

Nail or Nails may refer to:

In biology

Objects

Arts and entertainment

People

Businesses

Nail (unit)

A nail, as a unit of cloth measurement, is generally a sixteenth of a yard or 2¹⁄₄ inches (5.715 cm). The nail was apparently named after the practice of hammering brass nails into the counter at shops where cloth was sold. On the other hand, R D Connor, in The weights and measures of England (p 84) states that the nail was the 16th part of a Roman foot, i.e., digitus or finger, although he provides no reference to support this.Zupko's A dictionary of weights and measures for the British Isles (p 256) states that the nail was originally the distance from the thumbnail to the joint at the base of the thumb, or alternately, from the end of the middle finger to the second joint.

An archaic usage of the term nail is as a sixteenth of a (long) hundredweight for mass, or 1 clove of 7 pound avoirdupois (3.175 kg).

The nail in literature

Thou yard, three-quarters, half-yard, quarter, nail
Thou flea, thou nit, thou winter cricket thou:―
Brav'd in mine own house with a skein of
thread!

Explanation: Katherine and Petruchio are getting married. At the tailor shop, they examine the wedding dress, which is nearly finished. Petruchio is concerned that it has too many frills, wonders what it will cost, and suspects that he has been cheated. Katherine says she likes it, and complains that Petruchio is making a fool of her. The taylor repeats Katherine's words: Sir, she says you're making a fool of her. This is where Petruchio launches into the above-quoted tirade. Monstrous may be a double-entendre for cuckold. The half-yard, quarter and nail were divisions of the yard used in cloth measurement.

Nail (fastener)

In woodworking and construction, a nail is a pin-shaped object of metal (or wood, called a treenail or "trunnel") which is used as a fastener, as a peg to hang something, or sometimes as a decoration. Generally nails have a sharp point on one end and a flattened head on the other, but headless nails are available. Nails are made in a great variety of forms for specialized purposes. The most common is a wire nail. Other types of nails include pins, tacks, brads, and spikes.

Nails are typically driven into the workpiece by a hammer, a pneumatic nail gun, or a small explosive charge or primer. A nail holds materials together by friction in the axial direction and shear strength laterally. The point of the nail is also sometimes bent over or clinched after driving to prevent pulling out.

History

The history of the nail is divided roughly into three distinct periods:

Ally

Ally is the singular form of allies.

Ally may refer to:

Place names

People

Art, entertainment, and media

Biology

Enterprises

See also

List of Hollyoaks characters (2012)

The following is a list of characters that first appeared or will appear in the British Channel 4 soap opera Hollyoaks in 2012, by order of first appearance. All characters are introduced by the series' producer, Emma Smithwick. The first character to be announced was Ally Gorman; soon followed by Phoebe Jackson. While interviewed by Inside Soap, Smithwick announced that she planned to introduce more characters to expand the Kane family. The first to arrive was Martha Kane; soon followed by Lacey Kane - while Amy Downham joined the serial playing the role of Jen Gilmore. Later introductions include "bad boy" character Walker and deaf teenager Dylan Shaw; while Maddie Morrison's father Ed and mother Elizabeth arrived. June saw the arrival of Walt played by former EastEnders actor Cliff Parisi. Liam Gilmore (James Farrar) began appearing from August, while Oscar Osborne arrived prematurely in October. Maxine Minniver, played by Nikki Sanderson, began appearing in November, as did Patrick and Sienna Blake, played by Jeremy Sheffield and Anna Passey respectively as well as Jim McGinn played by Dan Tetsell and Brendan & Cheryl Brady's father, Seamus shortly followed.

Ally (novel)

Ally is a science fiction novel written by Karen Traviss and was published in March 2007. It is the fifth book in the Wess'Har Series.

Plot

The worlds orbiting Cavanagh's Star are in turmoil. Civil war on Umeh—ignited by outsiders—threatens to annihilate the teeming masses of a grossly overpopulated planet. On Bezer'ej, the handful of native aquatic creatures who survived extermination must take extraordinary and terrible steps to ensure the future of their kind . . .

And the interlopers from a distant planet called Earth can only watch the chaos they helped, in part, to create—knowing their home world will be next to suffer. The day of reckoning is rapidly approaching when the powerful Eqbas will remake the Earth at the expense of its dominant species. And Shan Frankland—once a police officer, once human, now something much more—must decide where her loyalties truly lie: among the gethes, on a planet she once called home, or here, where a dying species presents her with a new and unexpected crisis.