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To draw together or nearer; to reduce to a less compass; to shorten, narrow, or lesen; as, to contract one's shpere of action. In all things desuetude doth contract and narrow our faculties. Dr. H. More.

Drawn together; shrunken; wrinkled; narrow; as, a contracted brow; a contracted noun.

The state of being contracted; narrowness; meannes; selfishness.

erted. B. Jonson. Converted guns, cast-iron guns lined with wrought-iron or steel tubes. Farrow. -- Converting furnace (Steel Manuf.), a furnace in which wrought iron is converted into steel by cementation.

To confine in a coop; hence, to shut up or confine in a narrow compass; to cramp; -- usually followed by up, sometimes by in. The Trojans coopet within their walls so long. Dryden. The contempt of all other knowledge . . . coops the understanding up within narrow bounds. Locke.

A narrow chisel adapted for cutting a groove. Knight.

The connecting crook of a harrow. [Prov. Eng.]

ery small number of persons. -- Lance corporal, an assistant corporal on private's pay. Farrow. -- Ship's corporal (Naut.), a petty officer who assists the master at arms in his various duties.

tance of vegetable origin, allied to curare, and used by the natives of New Granada as an arrow poison.

table or board on which money is counted and over which business is transacted; a long, narrow table or bench, on which goods are laid for examination by purchasers, or on which they are weighed or measured.

y such advantage that the troops occupying it must either surrender or be cut to pieces. Farrow.

artial separation of parts, with or without a perceptible opening; a chink or fissure; a narrow breach; a crevice; as, a crack in timber, or in a wall, or in glass.

Cutting a cask into two pieces lengthwise, to enable it to pass a narrow place, the two parts being afterward united and rehooped.

That which confines or contracts; a restraint; a shakle; a hindrance. A narrow fortune is a cramp to a great mind. L'Estrange. Crippling his pleasures with the cramp of fear. Cowper.

Liable to careen or be overest, as a ship when she is too narrow, or has not sufficient ballast, or is loaded too high, to carry full sail.

A small, narrow opening, fissure, crevice, or chink, as in a wall, or other substance. In a firm building, the cavities ought not to be filled with rubbish, but with brick or stone fitted to the crannies. Dryden. He peeped into every cranny. Arbuthnot.

Coarse, heavy, narrow linen cloth, used esp. for towels.

A small inlet or bay, narrower and extending further into the land than a cove; a recess in the shore of the sea, or of a river. Each creek and cavern of the dangerous shore. Cowper. They discovered a certain creek, with a shore. Acts xxvii. 39.

A narrow opening resulting from a split or crack or the separation of a junction; a cleft; a fissure; a rent. The mouse, Behind the moldering wainscot, shrieked, Or from the crevice peered about. Tennyson.

To shut up or confine in a narrow habitation; to cage; to cramp. If only the vital energy be not cribbed or cramped. I. Taylor. Now I am cabin'd, cribbed, confined. Shak.