Bound is the limit itself or furthest point of extension, and may be an imaginary line; but boundary is the thing which ascertains the limit. Thus by a statute of Connecticut, it is enacted that the inhabitants of every town shall procure its bounds to be set out by such marks and boundaries as may be a plain direction for the future; which marks and boundaries shall be a great heap of stones or a ditch of six feet long, &c. This distinction is observed also in the statute of Massachusetts. But the two words are, in ordinary use, confounded.
An exclamation expressive of grief or sorrow, equivalent to alas. It is a compound of the Saxon wa, wo, and la, oh. The original is wa-la, which is doubtless the origin of our common exclamation, O la, and to this, wa, wo, is added. The true orthography would be wa la wa. But the word is, I believe, wholly obsolete.
In ancient customs of England, a liberty of winter pasturage. In Norfolk and Suffolk, the lord of the manor has a shack, that is, liberty of feeding his sheep at pleasure on his tenants' lands during the six winter months. In Norfolk, shack extends to the common for hogs, in all men's grounds, from harvest to seed time; whence to go a-shack, is to feed at large. In New England, shack is used in a somewhat similar sense for mast or the food of swine, and for feeding at large or in the forest, [for we have no manors,] and I have heard a shiftless fellow, a vagabond, called a shack.
Advanced far in years or life; having lived beyond the middle period, or rather towards the end of life, or towards the end of the ordinary term of living; applied to animals or plants; as an old man; an old age; an old camel or horse; an old tree. We apply old chiefly to things subject to decay. We never say, the old sun, or an old mountain.
This power, principle or tendency in bodies to unite, is distinguished by philosophers into attraction of gravity or gravitation, which extends to a sensible distance, such as the tendency of the planets to the sun, or of a stone, when raised in the air, to fall to the earth, and of which kind is the attraction of magnetism, and of electricity; and into attraction of cohesion, or that tendency which is manifested between small particles of matter, at insensible distances, or near the point of contact, to unite them in coherence. The attraction of gravity is supposed to be the great principle that confines the planets in their orbits. Its power or force is directly as the quantity of matter in a body, and inversely as the square of the distances of the attracting bodies. Contiguous attraction is that which is exerted between minute particles or atoms, at insensible distances. When this principle unites particles of the same kind, it is called affinity of aggregation, cohesive affinity or cohesion. When it operates on dissimilar particles, producing union, it is distinguished as heterogeneous, and called chimical attraction or affinity.
A plot or scheme of a complicated nature. The word is usually applied to affairs of love or of government.
A place, cavern or pit where stones are dug from the earth, or separated from a large mass of rocks. We generally apply the word mine to the pit from which are taken metals and coal; from quarries are taken stones for building, as marble, freestone, slate, &c. In Paris, the quarries are a vast cavern under the city, several miles in extent.
Noting the passing of a thing from one form or state to another. Compound substances may be resolved into others which are more simple; ice is convertible into water, and water into vapor. Men are more easily drawn than forced into compliance. We reduce many distinct substances into one mass. We are led by evidence into belief of truth. Men are often enticed into the commision of crimes. Children are sometimes frightened into fits, and we are all liable to be seduced into error and folly.
Properly, a trench or ditch only; but as the earth thrown out of a trench forms a part, and often the most necessary and useful part of a fortification; hence intrenchment is generally understood to signify a ditch and parapet, and sometimes it signifies fascines covered with earth, gabions, bags filled with earth, or other materials collected to cover men from an enemy's fire.
A tract of low or plain ground between hills, or along the banks of rivers, usually alluvial land enriched by the overflowing of rivers, or by fertilizing deposits of earth from the adjacent hills.
The manner of falling on, or the direction in which one body falls on or strikes another. The angle which the line of falling, or the direction of a moving body striking another, makes with the plane struck, is called the angle of incidence.
Originally, the name of a street near Moorfields, in London, much inhabited by mean writers; hence applied to mean writings; as a Grubstreet poem.
