WAVE n.
Fig.: A swelling or excitement of thought, feeling, or energy; a tide; as, waves of enthusiasm. Wave front (Physics), the surface of initial displacement of the particles in a medium, as a wave of vibration advances. -- Wave length (Physics), the space, reckoned in the direction of propagation, occupied by a complete…
WORK v.
liquor. To work a passage (Naut.), to pay for a passage by doing work. -- To work double tides (Naut.), to perform the labor of three days in two; -- a phrase which alludes to a practice of working by the night tide as well as by the day. -- To work in, to insert, introduce, mingle, or interweave by labor or skill.…
WORTH v.
To be; to become; to betide; -- now used only in the phrases, woe worth the day, woe worth the man, etc., in which the verb is in the imperative, and the nouns day, man, etc., are in the dative. Woe be to the day, woe be to the man, etc., are equivalent phrases. I counsel . . . to let the cat worthe. Piers Plowman. He…
YULE n.
Christmas or Christmastide; the feast of the Nativity of our Savior. And at each pause they kiss; was never seen such rule In any place but here, at bonfire, or at Yule. Drayton. Yule block, or Yule log, a large log of wood formerly put on the hearth of Christmas eve, as the foundation of the fire. It was brought in wi…