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Frustrating; discomfiting; disconcerting; as, baffling currents, winds, tasks. -- Bafflingly, adv. -- Bafflingness, n.

A seller or maker of ballads; a poetaster. Shak.

, or balsam of Mecca. This has a yellowish or greenish color, a warm, bitterish, aromatic taste, and a fragrant smell. It is valued as an unguent and cosmetic by the Turks. The fragrant herb Dracocephalum Canariense is familiarly called balm of Gilead, and so are the American trees, Populus balsamifera, variety candica…

A ratlike marsupial animal (genus Perameles) of several species, found in Australia and Tasmania.

eating and drinking; to feast. Were it a draught for Juno when she banquets, I would not taste thy treasonous offer. Milton.

Foreign; adapted to a barbaric taste.[Obs.] Barbarous gold. Dryden.

In bad taste; grotesque; odd.

t one's self. Dryden. The pampered monarch lay battening in ease. Garth. Skeptics, with a taste for carrion, who batten on the hideous facts in history, -- persecutions, inquisitions. Emerson.

b. [Obs.] "A fool's bauble was a short stick with a head ornamented with an ass's ears fantastically carved upon it." Nares.

y leaf, the leaf of the bay tree (Laurus nobilis). It has a fragrant odor and an aromatic taste.

ellebore (Helleborus foetidus), with digitate leaves. It has an offensive smell and acrid taste, and is a powerful emetic, cathartic, and anthelmintic.

Prevailing style or taste; rage; fashion. [Obs.] She stained her hair yellow, which was then the beauty. Jer. Taylor. Beauty spot, a patch or spot placed on the face with intent to heighten beauty by contrast.

h, used chiefly for making overcoats. Beaver rat (Zoöl.), an aquatic ratlike quadruped of Tasmania (Hydromys chrysogaster). -- Beaver skin, the furry skin of the beaver. -- Bank beaver. See under 1st Bank.

To dress or adorn tawdrily or with false taste. Remnants of tapestried hangings, . . . and shreds of pictures with which he had bedizened his tatters. Sir W. Scott.

ure; the humanities; -- used somewhat vaguely for literary works in which imagination and taste are predominant.

To overtake with night or darkness, especially before the end of a day's journey or task. Some virgin, sure, . . . benighted in these woods. Milton.

s animals. It crystallizes in the form of white, satiny flakes; its odor is aromatic; its taste is pungent, and somewhat acidulous. -- Benzoic aldehyde, oil of bitter almonds; the aldehyde, C6H5.CHO, intermediate in composition between benzoic or benzyl alcohol, and benzoic acid. It is a thin colorless liquid.…

rax benzoin, a tree of Sumatra, Java, etc., having a fragrant odor, and slightly aromatic taste. It is used in the preparation of benzoic acid, in medicine, and as a perfume.

ed over; strewed. His face besprent with liquid crystal shines. Shenstone. The floor with tassels of fir was besprent. Longfellow.

as a white crystalline substance; -- called also lycine and oxyneurine. It has a sweetish taste.