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Divination by means of a child's navel, to learn how many children the mother may have. Crabb.

A child bereaved of both father and mother; sometimes, also, a child who has but one parent living. Orphans' court (Law), a court in some of the States of the Union, having jurisdiction over the estates and persons of orphans or other wards. Bouvier.

To smother with a close covering, or by lying upon. This woman's child died in the night; because she overlaid it. 1 Kings iii. 19. A heap of ashes that o'erlays your fire. Dryden.

eath. To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise. Luke xxiii. 43. It sounds to him like her mother's voice, Singing in Paradise. Longfellow.

One who begets, or brings forth, offspring; a father or a mother. Children, obey your parents in the Lord. Eph. vi. 1.

erly, one who murders one's own father; in a wider sense, one who murders one's father or mother or any ancestor.

substance around some irritating foreign particle. Its substance is the same as nacre, or mother-of-pearl. Pearls which are round, or nearly round, and of fine luster, are highly esteemed as jewels, and compare in value with the precious stones.

Resembling pearl or mother-of-pearl; pearly in quality or appearance.

To throw out words. [Obs.] Another smothered seems to peltand swear. Shak.

Offerings formerly made to the parish priest, or to the mother church, at Pentecost. Shipley.

ecies of longwinged sea birds belonging to the family Procellaridæ. The small petrels, or Mother Carey's chickens, belong to Oceanites, Oceanodroma, Procellaria, and several allied genera. Diving petrel, any bird of the genus Pelecanoides. They chiefly inhabit the southern hemisphere. -- Fulmar petrel, Giant petrel. S…

tempt. "If I had not been a piece of a logician before I came to him." Sir P. Sidney. Thy mother was a piece of virtue. Shak. His own spirit is as unsettled a piece as there is in all the world. Coleridge. a piece of cake, a task easily accomplished. a piece of work, a disparaging term for a person considered to have a…

To act; to behave; to practice deception. His mother played false with a smith. Shak.

Born after the death of the father, or taken from the dead body of the mother; as, a posthumous son or daughter.

establish or discover a fact or truth; an act of testing; a test; a trial. For whatsoever mother wit or art Could work, he put in proof. Spenser. You shall have many proofs to show your skill. Ford. Formerly, a very rude mode of ascertaining the strength of spirits was practiced, called the proof. Ure.…

A word, or a manner of speaking, peculiar to a province or a district remote from the mother country or from the metropolis; a provincial characteristic; hence, narrowness; illiberality. M. Arnold.

For the certain knowledge of that knowledge of that truthput you o'er to heaven and to my mother. Shak.

Offerings formerly made to the mother church of a diocese on Mid-Lent Sunday.

different coats of arms) upon one escutcheon, as when a man inherits from both father and mother the right to bear arms.

erly a revenue of the queen consort of England, arising from gifts, fines, etc. -- Queen mother, a queen dowager who is also mother of the reigning king or queen. -- Queen of May. See May queen, under May. -- Queen of the meadow (Bot.), a European herbaceous plant (Spiræa Ulmaria). See Meadowsweet. -- Queen of the…