SILENCE, (Silence, Fr.) This word is used by the French as a caution to soldiers to prepare for any part of the military duty or exercise. The French have likewise another term which corresponds with our word attention. See [Garde]. We use Attention in both instances.
SILHATARIS, Fr. See [Spahis].
SILLAGE, Fr. The wake of a ship; the trace which a vessel leaves astern when she moves forward.
SILLON, in fortification, is a work raised in the middle of a ditch, to defend it when it is too wide. It has no particular form, and is sometimes made with little bastions, half-moons, and redans, which are lower than the works of the place, but higher than the covert way. It is more frequently called [envelope], which see.
SIMILAR polygons, are such as have their angles severally equal, and the sides about those angles proportional.
To SIMPLIFY. This word has been adopted amongst men of business and arrangement, from the French simplifier, which means to relate the bare matter of fact. This signification likewise reaches every species of analysis, &c. Thus the advantage of the new manual over the old, is owing to the reduction of the latter into fewer motions and words of command, by which that exercise has been considerably simplified. The oblique facings, under the denomination of quarter facings, half facings, of single files; the half wheelings, quarter wheelings, and half quarter wheelings of sections, platoons, divisions, and battalions, are all more simple in the new discipline than the methods of the old.
SINE. In geometry, a right sine, is a right line drawn from one end of an arch perpendicularly upon the diameter drawn from the other end of the arch.
Sines. See [table of Natural Sines], at the end of the word [Gunnery].
SINGE, Fr. An instrument so called. See [Pentagraph].
SINGLE combat, a contest in which not more than two are engaged.