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contract into a less extent or compass; to gather together; to become compacted. And on a broken reed he still did stay His feeble steps, which shrunk when hard thereon he lay. Spenser. I have not found that water, by mixture of ashes, will shrink or draw into less room. Bacon. Against this fire do I shrink up. Shak. A…

Easily broken through; boggy; marshy; swampy. [Prov. Eng. & Colloq. U.S.] Bartlett.

To break in pieces by violence; to dash to pieces; to crush. Here everything is broken and smashed to pieces. Burke.

A tooth projecting beyond the rest; contemptuously, a broken or decayed tooth. Prior.

A small piece, fragment, or quantity; a broken part; a scrap. We have often little snatches of sunshine. Spectator. Leave me your snatches, and yield me a direct answer. Shak.

A half suppressed, broken laugh. [Written also snigger.]

peak through the nose; to breathe through the nose when it is obstructed, so as to make a broken sound. One clad in purple Eats, and recites some lamentable rhyme . . . Snuffling at nose, and croaking in his throat. Dryden.

dominion. Locke. Here, then, exchange we mutually forgiveness; So may the guilt of all my broken vows, My perjuries to thee, be all forgotten. Rowe.

To mend; to patch up. "To solder up a broken cause." Hooker.

A cradle, as for a broken limb. See Cradle, 6.

Applied to a compound word whose parts are closely united and form an unbroken word; -- opposed to hyphened.

Whole; unbroken; unharmed; free from flaw, defect, or decay; perfect of the kind; as, sound timber; sound fruit; a sound tooth; a sound ship.

larger portion of the space of the whole spectrum. -- Continous spectrum, a spectrum not broken by bands or lines, but having the colors shaded into each other continously, as that from an incandescent solid or liquid, or a gas under high pressure. -- Diffraction spectrum, a spectrum produced by diffraction, as by a…

ood, or other substance, used to keep in place, or protect, an injured part, especially a broken bone when set.

To fasten or confine with splinters, or splints, as a broken limb. Bp. Wren.

To be broken; to be dashed to pieces. The ship splits on the rock. Shak.

ilitary expedition. -- Spun silk, a cheap article produced from floss, or short-fibered, broken, and waste silk, carded and spun, in distinction from the long filaments wound from the cocoon. It is often mixed with cotton. -- Spun yarn (Naut.), a line formed of two or more rope-yarns loosely twisted.…

plane of the horizon; a precipice. Dryden. We had on each side naked rocks and mountains broken into a thousand irregular steeps and precipices. Addison. Bare steeps, where desolation stalks. Wordsworth.

cured; nevertheless; -- sometimes used as a conjunction. See Synonym of But. As sunshine, broken in the rill, Though turned astray, is sunshine still. Moore.

ction from engraving in lines. The interlaying of small pieces can not altogether avoid a broken, stippled, spotty effect. Milman.