Search the Dictionary

Originally, cambric or lawn of fine linen; now applied also to cloth of similar texture made of cotton.

The unlawful beating of another. It includes every willful, angry and violent, or negligent touching of another's person or clothes, or anything attached to his person or held by him.

. to have a legal residence, settlement, or inhabitancy, whether by birth or operation of law, so as to be entitled to maintenance by the parish or town. Bastards also are settled in the parishes to which the mothers belong. Blackstone.

ents; accomplishments. [R.] "The benefits of your own country." Shak. Benefit of clergy. (Law) See under Clergy.

ectation." Barrow. Beyond any of the great men of my country. Sir P. Sidney. Beyond sea. (Law) See under Sea. -- To go beyond, to exceed in ingenuity, in research, or in anything else; hence, in a bed sense, to deceive or circumvent. That no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter. 1 Thess. iv. 6.…

omplainant has suffered from the defendant, or a fault committed by some person against a law.

Fig.: To oblige, restrain, or hold, by authority, law, duty, promise, vow, affection, or other moral tie; as, to bind the conscience; to bind by kindness; bound by affection; commerce binds nations to each other. Who made our laws to bind us, not himself. Milton.

he species, to which it belongs. Binomial theorem (Alg.), the theorem which expresses the law of formation of any power of a binomial.

ilionaceous plant, the Ornithopus, having a curved, cylindrical pod tipped with a short, clawlike point. Bird's-foot trefoil. (Bot.) (a) A genus of plants (Lotus) with clawlike pods. L. corniculatas, with yellow flowers, is very common in Great Britain.

e, or possession to which a person is entitled by birth, such as an estate descendible by law to an heir, or civil liberty under a free constitution; esp. the rights or inheritance of the first born. Lest there be any . . . profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. Heb. xii. 16.…

A stain; a spot; a smooch. Defiling her white lawn of chastity with ugly blacks of lust. Rowley. Black and white, writing or print; as, I must have that statement in black and white. -- Blue black, a pigment of a blue black color. -- Ivory black, a fine kind of animal charcoal prepared by calcining ivory or bones. Wh…

A book of admiralty law, of the highest authority, compiled in the reign of Edw. III. Bouvier. Wharton.

A lawless or blackmailing secret society, esp. among Italians. [U. S.]

Absolute; downright; unmixed; as, blank terror. Blank bar (Law), a plea put in to oblige the plaintiff in an action of trespass to assign the certain place where the trespass was committed; -- called also common bar. -- Blank cartridge, a cartridge containing no ball. -- Blank deed. See Deed. -- Blank door, or Blank…

the blood of Saxon royalty. Sir W. Scott. A friend of our own blood. Waller. Half blood (Law), relationship through only one parent. -- Whole blood, relationship through both father and mother. In American Law, blood includes both half blood, and whole blood. Bouvier. Peters.

A hand stained with the blood of a deer, which, in the old forest laws of England, was sufficient evidence of a man's trespass in the forest against venison. Jacob.

ver strict in morals; inculcating an impracticable, severe, or gloomy mortality; as, blue laws.

The State of Delaware; -- a popular sobriquet. It is said, though the story lacks proof, to have taken its origin from the insistence of a Delaware Revolutionary captain, named Caldwell, that no cock could be truly game unless the mother was a blue hen, whence Blue Hen's Chickens came to be a nickname for the people of…

ticulars embodied in a system; a general collection; as, a great body of facts; a body of laws or of divinity.

To discuss or argue privately, and for practice, as cases at law. Jacob. To bolt to the bran, to examine thoroughly, so as to separate or discover everything important. Chaucer. This bolts the matter fairly to the bran. Harte. The report of the committee was examined and sifted and bolted to the bran. Burke.…