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A bird whose beak bends upward, as the avocet.

To bend back; to give a backwaas, a mirror reflects rays of light; polished metals reflect heat. Let me mind the reader to reflect his eye on our quotations. Fuller. Bodies close together reflect their own color. Dryden.

Bending or flying back; reflected. "The ray descendent, and the ray reflectent flying with so great a speed." Sir K. Digby.

To bend back; to turn back. J. Gregory.

Bending or turned backward; reflective; having respect to something past. Assurance reflexive can not be a divine faith. Hammond.

To bend sharply and abruptly back; to break off.

To remit attention or effort; to become less diligent; to unbend; as, to relax in study.

To recede; to fall or bend back; as, the shore of the sea retires in bays and gulfs.

To bend or curve back; as, a retorted line. With retorted head, pruned themselves as they floated. Southey.

A turning or bending backward; also, the state of being turned or bent backward; displacement backwards; as, retroversion of the uterus.

o that it returns to the hand from which it is thrown, -- used as a plaything. -- Return bend, a pipe fitting for connecting the contiguous ends of two nearly parallel pipes lying alongside or one above another. -- Return day (Law), the day when the defendant is to appear in court, and the sheriff is to return the wr…

in advance. -- Reverse curve (Railways), a curve like the letter S, formed of two curves bending in opposite directions. -- Reverse fire (Mil.), a fire in the rear. -- Reverse operation (Math.), an operation the steps of which are taken in a contrary order to that in which the same or similar steps are taken in anot…

A bearing similar to the bend, but only one eighth as wide.

An interior corner; a nook; hence, an angular recess or hollow bend in a mountain, river, cliff, or the like. [Western & Southern U. S.] D. S. Jordan.

Broken, as an ordinary; cut off, or broken at the top, as a chevron, a bend, or the like.

e planted, fixed, or established; to increase and spread; as, an opinion takes root. "The bended twigs take root." Milton.

ned for riding with a saddle. -- Saddle joint, in sheet-metal roofing, a joint formed by bending up the edge of a sheet and folding it downward over the turned-up edge of the next sheet. -- Saddle roof (Arch.), a roof having two gables and one ridge; -- said of such a roof when used in places where a different form i…

Fig.: To lose firmness or elasticity; to sink; to droop; to flag; to bend; to yield, as the mind or spirits, under the pressure of care, trouble, doubt, or the like; to be unsettled or unbalanced. [R.] the mind I sway by, and the heart I bear, Shall never sag with doubt nor shake with fear. Shak.

A bending or sinking between the ends of a thing, in consequence of its own, or an imposed, weight; an arching downward in the middle, as of a ship after straining. Cf. Hogging.

ders, and sellenders.] On the inside of the hock, or a little below it, as well as at the bend of the knee, there is occasionally a scurfy eruption called "mallenders" in the fore leg, and "sallenders" in the hind leg. Youatt.