Noun

(en noun)

A phase.

* (1800-1859)

Such a polity is suited only to a particular stage in the progress of society.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-28, author=(Joris Luyendijk)

, volume=189, issue=3, page=21, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= Our banks are out of control , passage=Seeing the British establishment struggle with the financial sector is like watching an alcoholic […].  Until 2008 there was denial over what finance had become. […]  But the scandals kept coming, and so we entered stage three – what therapists call "bargaining". A broad section of the political class now recognises the need for change but remains unable to see the necessity of a fundamental overhaul. Instead it offers fixes and patches.}}

The area, in any theatre, generally raised, upon which an audience watches plays or other public ceremonies.

* (Alexander Pope) (1688-1744)

Knights, squires, and steeds must enter on the stage .

* (1791–1875)

Lo! Where the stage , the poor, degraded stage, / Holds its warped mirror to a gaping age.

A floor or storey of a house.

(Wyclif)

A floor elevated for the convenience of mechanical work, etc.; scaffolding; staging.

A platform, often floating, serving as a kind of wharf.

A stagecoach, an enclosed horsedrawn carriage used to carry passengers.

* (William Cowper) (1731-1800)

a parcel sent you by the stage

* (Jonathan Swift) (1667–1745)

I went in the sixpenny stage .

(label) A place of rest on a regularly travelled road; a station; a place appointed for a relay of horses.

(label) A degree of advancement in a journey; one of several portions into which a road or course is marked off; the distance between two places of rest on a road.

* Jeffrey

A stage signifies a certain distance on a road.

* 1858 , (Samuel Smiles), (Robert Stephenson), The Life of George Stephenson: Railway Engineer , p.356

He travelled by gig, with his wife, his favourite horse performing the journey by easy stages .

*{{quote-book, year=1910, author=(Emerson Hough)

, title= The Purchase Price, chapter=3 , passage=The Mount Vernon , favoured by a good stage of water, soon cleared the narrow Monongahela channel, passed the confluence, and headed down under full steam, […].}}

(label) The number of an electronic circuit’s block, such as a filter, an amplifier, etc.

The place on a microscope where the slide is located for viewing.

(label) A level; one of the sequential areas making up the game.

A place where anything is publicly exhibited, or a remarkable affair occurs; the scene.

* (William Shakespeare) (1564-1616)

When we are born, we cry that we are come / To this stage of fools.

* (John Milton) (1608-1674)

Music and ethereal mirth / Wherewith the stage of air and earth did ring.

* {{quote-news, year=2011, date=September 2, author=Phil McNulty, work=BBC

, title= Bulgaria 0-3 England , passage=Rooney's United team-mate Chris Smalling was given his debut at right-back and was able to adjust to the international stage in relatively relaxed fashion as Bulgaria barely posed a threat of any consequence.}}

Noun

(en noun)

(mathematics) A regular three-dimensional object in which every cross-section is a circle; the figure described by the revolution of a circle about its diameter .

A spherical physical object; a globe or ball.

* Milton

Of celestial bodies, first the sun, / A mighty sphere , he framed.

* 2011 , Piers Sellers, The Guardian , 6 July:

So your orientation changes a little bit but it sinks in that the world is a sphere , and you're going around it, sometimes under it, sideways, or over it.

* 1635 , John Donne, "His parting form her":

Though cold and darkness longer hang somewhere, / Yet Phoebus equally lights all the Sphere .

(historical, astronomy, mythology) Any of the concentric hollow transparent globes formerly believed to rotate around the Earth, and which carried the heavenly bodies; there were originally believed to be eight, and later nine and ten; friction between them was thought to cause a harmonious sound (the music of the spheres ).

*, vol.1, p.153:

It is more simplicitie to teach our children[t]he knowledge of the starres, and the motion of the eighth spheare , before their owne.

* 1646 , (Thomas Browne), Pseudodoxia Epidemica , I.6:

They understood not the motion of the eighth sphear from West to East, and so conceived the longitude of the Stars invariable.

(mythology) An area of activity for a planet; or by extension, an area of influence for a god, hero etc.

(figuratively) The region in which something or someone is active; one's province, domain.

* 1946 , (Bertrand Russell), History of Western Philosophy , I.20:

They thought – originally on grounds derived from religion – that each thing or person had its or his proper sphere , to overstep which is ‘unjust’.

(geometry) The set of all points in three-dimensional Euclidean space (or n -dimensional space, in topology) that are a fixed distance from a fixed point .

(logic) The extension of a general conception, or the totality of the individuals or species to which it may be applied.