single file

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single file

A line of people, animals, or things standing or moving one behind the other. Also called Indian file.

single file adv.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

single file

a line of persons, animals, or things ranged one behind the other, either stationary or moving

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

sin′gle file′

1. a line of persons or things arranged one behind the other.

adv.

2. in such a line: to walk single file.

[1660–70]

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Noun

single file - a line of persons or things ranged one behind the other

Indian file, file

snake dance - a group advancing in a single-file serpentine path

column - a line of units following one after another

line - a formation of people or things one behind another; "the line stretched clear around the corner"; "you must wait in a long line at the checkout counter"

Translations

single file

n in single file → in fila indiana

Collins Italian Dictionary 1st Edition © HarperCollins Publishers 1995

References in classic literature ?

As the cavalcade took up the line of march in single file, Sola dragged me into an empty chariot and we proceeded with the procession toward the point by which I had entered the city the day before.

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On a summer afternoon in the Castle gardens, I have seen six students march solemnly into the grounds, in single file, each carrying a bright Chinese parasol and leading a prodigious dog by a string.

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About night we landed at one of them little Missouri towns high up toward Iowa, and had supper at the tavern, and got a room upstairs with a cot and a double bed in it, but I dumped my bag under a deal table in the dark hall while we was moving along it to bed, single file, me last, and the landlord in the lead with a tallow candle.

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If Levin could have understood why, just as he saw why one can only approach the booking office of a railway station in single file, it would not have been so vexatious and tiresome to him.

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At other times in single file, first one and then the other in advance.

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At the far eastern confine a strange cavalcade strung, in single file, over the brow of a low hill.

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After our visitors rode away in single file over the hill, we returned to the kitchen.

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The third day found them on the run-ways of the bushmen--narrow paths that compelled single file and that turned and twisted with endless convolutions through the dense undergrowth.

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He was not long in making the discovery, for the sides of the mountain came closer together until finally there was but a narrow path between them, along which Ozma and her party were forced to pass in single file.

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They had arrived at the top of a long line of some eight hundred men in single file, and Lord George had turned his head to look back, when a loud cry of recognition--in that peculiar and half- stifled tone which a voice has, when it is raised in the open air and in the midst of a great concourse of persons--was heard, and a man stepped with a shout of laughter from the rank, and smote Barnaby on the shoulders with his heavy hand.

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In single file they followed it for about half an hour.

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He put the end of his stick within six or eight inches of a stone wall, and made the geese march in single file between it and the wall.