That in which any thing is or may be carried; any kind of carriage moving on land, either on wheels or runners. This word comprehends coaches, chariots, gigs, sullies, wagons, carts of every kind, sleighs and sleds. These are all vehicles. But the word is more generally applied to wheel carriages, and rarely I believe to water craft.
The edge or border of the mouth. The lips are two fleshy or muscular parts, composing the exterior of the mouth in man and many other animals. In man, the lips, which may be opened or closed at pleasure, form the covering of the teeth, and are organs of speech essential to certain articulations. Hence the lips, by a figure, denote the mouth, or all the organs of speech, and sometimes speech itself.
That which is emitted from a star.
I have seen a good quantity of that jelly, by the vulgar called a star-shoot, as if it remained upon the extinction of a falling star.
[The writer once saw the same kind of substance from a brilliant meteor, at Amherst in Massachusetts. See Journ. Of Science for a description of it by Rufus Graves, Esq.]
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To bring to a common center, or to a closer union; to cause to approach nearer to each other; as, to concentrate particles of salt by evaporating the water that holds them in solution; to concentrate the troops in an army; to concentrate rays of light into a focus.
To increase the specific gravity of a body.
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A sudden discharge of electricity from a cloud to the earth, or from the earth to a cloud, or from one cloud to another, that is, from a body positively charged to one negatively charged, producing a vivid flash of light, and usually a loud report, called thunder. Sometimes lightning is a mere instantaneous flash of light without thunder, as heat-lightning, lightning seen by reflection, the flash being beyond the limits of our horizon.
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A contention or trial of strength between two persons, who embrace each other's bodies; a struggle with close embrace, to decide which shall throw the other; in distinction from wrestling, which is a trial of strength and dexterity at arm's length. Among our common people, it is not unusual for two persons to commence a contest by wrestling, and at last close in, as it is called, and decide the contest by a scuffle.
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The act of passing or flowing out; a moving out of any inclosed place; egress; applied to water or other fluid, to smoke, to a body of men, &c. We say, an issue of water from a pipe, from a spring, or from a river; an issue of blood from a wound, of air from a bellows; an issue of people from a door or house.
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Properly, vapor; hence, thin flying broken clouds, or any portion of floating vapor in the sky.
The winds in the upper region, which move the clouds above, which we call the rack.
Bacon.
The great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this unsubstantial pageant, faded,
Leave not a rack behind.
Shak.
It is disputed however, whether rack in this passage should not be wreck.
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[L. vox; voco. The sense of the verb is to throw, to drive out sound; and voice is that which is driven out.]
Sound or audible noise uttered by the mouth, either of human beings or of other animals. We say, the voice of a man is loud or clear; the voice of a woman is soft or musical; the voice of a dog is loud or harsh; the voice of a bird is sweet or melodious. The voice of human beings is articulate; that of beasts, inarticulate. The voices of men are different, and when uttered together, are often dissonant.
A quadruped of the genus Ursus, of a clumsy make, with short, thick legs, and long claws on the fore feet. It inhabits the north of Europe and Asia, burrows, is indolent and sleepy, feeds by night on vegetables, and is very fat.
Its skin is used for pistol furniture; its flesh makes good bacon, and its hair is used for brushes to soften the shades in painting. The American badger is called the ground hog, and is sometimes white.
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The fluid which we breathe. Air is inodorous, invisible, insipid, colorless, elastic, possessed of gravity, easily moved, rarefied, and condensed.
Atmospheric air is a compound fluid, consisting of oxygen gas, and nitrogen or azote; the proportion of each is stated by chimists differently; some experiments making the oxygen a twenty-eighth part of a hundred; others, not more than a twenty-third, or something less. The latter is probably the true proportion.
Oxygen gas is called vital air. The body of air surrounding the earth is called the atmosphere. The specific gravity of air is to that of water, nearly as 1 to 828. Air is necessary to life; being inhaled into the lungs, the oxygenous part is separated from the azotic, and it is supposed to furnish the body with heat and animation. It is the medium of sounds and necessary to combustion.
A word used in calling.
Among seamen, it is the answer to one that hails, equivalent to,
I hear, and am ready.
1. An arm of the sea, extending into the land, not of any definite form, but smaller than a gulf, and larger than a creek. The name however is not used with much precision, and is often applied to large tracts of water, around which the land forms a curve, as Hudson's Bay. Nor is the name restricted to tracts of water with a narrow entrance, but used for any recess or inlet between capes of head lands, as the bay of Biscay.
2. A pond-head, or a pond formed by a dam, for the purpose of driving mill-wheels.
3. In a barn, a place between the floor and the end of the building, or a low inclosed place, for depositing hay.
In England, says Johnson, if a barn consists of a floor and two heads, where they lay corn, they call it a barn of two bays. These bays are from 14 to 20 feet long, and floors from 10 to 12 feet broad, and usually 20 feet long, which is the breadth of the barn.
4. In ships of war, that part on each side between decks which lies between the bitts.
5. Any kind of opening in walls.
1. To walk lamely, bearing chiefly on one leg; to limp; to walk with a hitch or hop, or with crutches.
2. To walk awkwardly, as when the feet are encumbered with a clog, or with fetters.
3. To move roughly or irregularly, as verse.
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1. A ball used in voting. Ballots are of different colors; those of one color give an affirmative; those of another, a negative. They are privately put into a box or urn.
2. A ticket or written vote, being given in lieu of a ballot, is now called by the same name.
3. The act of voting by balls or tickets.
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[See bow, to bend.]
An instrument of war, and hunting, made of wood, or other elastic matter, with a string fastened to each end. The bow being bent by drawing the string, and suddenly returning to its natural state by its elastic force, throws an arrow to a great distance, and with force sufficient to kill an animal. It is of two kinds, the long-bow, and the cross-bow, arbalet or arbalest. The use of the bow is called archery.
1. Any thing bent, or in form of a curve; the rainbow; the doubling of a string in a knot; the part of a yoke which embraces the neck; &c.
2. A small machine, formed with a stick and hairs, which being drawn over the strings of an instrument of music, causes it to sound.
3. A beam of wood or brass, with three long screws that direct a lathe of wood or steel to any arch; used in forming drafts of ships, and projections of the sphere, or wherever it is necessary to draw large arches.
4. An instrument for taking the sun's altitude at sea, consisting of a large arch of ninety degrees graduated, a shank or staff, a side-vane, a sight-vane, and a horizon-vane; now disused.
5. An instrument in use among smiths for turning a drill; with turners, for turning wood; with hatters, for breaking fur and wool.
6. Bows of a saddle, are the two pieces of wood laid archwise to receive the upper part of a horse's back, to give the saddle its due form, and to keep it tight.
7. Bow of a ship, is the rounding part of her side forward, beginning where the planks arch inwards, and terminating where they close, at the stem or prow. A narrow bow is called a lean bow; a broad one, a bold or bluff bow.
On the bow, in navigation, is an arch of the horizon, not exceeding 45 degrees, comprehended between some distant object, and that point of the compass which is right ahead.
