The drill may be gripped in a chuck with three jaws that move radially in unison, or it may have a tapered shank that fits into a tapered hole in the spindle.
Brendan McLaughlin, head of e-business at Cambridge Technology Partners, a high-tech consultancy, has a story about how he told one of his clients, a manufacturer of tapered roller bearings, about a Scandinavian firm that made nothing but replacement tapered roller bearings, and monitored other companies' production lines over the Internet to check when the parts were needed.
The desperation to be, or feel, as close as possible to the Kaaba has forced buildings to become ever higher, ever more ridiculously tapered, so everyone can have a view, however notional, of the sacred centre.
She said asset purchasing will "likely" be tapered unless something changes; she said the jobs market is better but not great; she said the Fed will look to the unemployment and inflation rates in setting future interest rates policy.
QE is being tapered away, but the electronic printing presses are still operating.
Drawn from the Met's holdings and from other public and private collections, it includes manuscripts, paintings, decorative objects and "unicorn horns" (actually the tapered, spiral-patterned tusks of the narwhal).
Even if scrappage schemes are continued or tapered, there may not be many buyers left who meet the qualifications.Although the scrappage schemes have kept factories going, most of the action has been geared towards cheap, small vehicles which are less profitable for carmakers.
Unwanted babies were more likely to grow as criminals, it was argued: that theory is now largely discredited: it doesn't cross borders and crime has continued to fall long after the effect should have tapered off.
But that cannot explain why rates have kept falling long after such an effect should have tapered off, or why crime rates in Britain, where abortion has been legal for longer, began falling later.
The handout is sharply tapered, meaning that it decreases rapidly for every extra pound earned.
