Search the Dictionary

is as unsettled a piece as there is in all the world. Coleridge. a piece of cake, a task easily accomplished. a piece of work, a disparaging term for a person considered to have an excess of some undesirable quality; esp. difficult or eccentric person. Piece of ass vulgar term for a woman, considered as a partner in s…

Timid; easily frightened; chicken-hearted. Beau. & Fl.

pliable; lithe; limber; plastic; as, a pliant thread; pliant wax. Also used figuratively: Easily influenced for good or evil; tractable; as, a pliant heart. The will was then ductile and pliant to right reason. South.

Wet and soft; easily penetrated by the feet of cattle; -- said of land

To carry; to bear; to transport. [Obs.] They are easily ported by boat into other shires. Fuller.

Capable of being borne or carried; easily transported; conveyed without difficulty; as, a portable bed, desk, engine. South.

To be reduced to powder; to become like powder; as, some salts powder easily.

Easily crumbling to pieces; friable; loose; as, a powdery spar.

A sea god in the service of Neptune who assumed different shapes at will. Hence, one who easily changes his appearance or principles.

To become reduced to powder; to fall to dust; as, the stone pulverizes easily.

Apt or disposed to quarrel; given to brawls and contention; easily irritated or provoked to contest; irascible; choleric.

Fastidious; squeamish; delicate; easily disturbed; unsettled; ticklish. " A queasy question." Shak. Some seek, when queasy conscience has its qualms. Cowper.

Sand easily moved or readily yielding to pressure; especially, a deep mass of loose or moving sand mixed with water, sometimes found at the mouth of a river or along some coasts, and very dangerous, from the difficulty of extricating a person who begins sinking into it. Life hath quicksands, -- Life hath snares! Longfe…

The process of taking in a reef. Reefing bowsprit, a bowsprit so rigged that it can easily be run in or shortened by sliding inboard, as in cutters.

not parts, but adjuncts, of repentance; yet they are too closely connected with it to be easily separated. Rambler.

A place in which things are disposed in an orderly manner, so that they can be easily found, as the index of a book, a commonplace book, or the like.

hence, morally abandoned and lost; given up to vice; depraved. And strength, and art, are easily outdone By spirits reprobate. Milton.

Inclined to resent; easily provoked to anger; irritable. -- Re*sent"ful*ly, adv.

Using the right hand habitually, or more easily than the left.

Fig.: Not easily impressed or affected; hard; unfeeling; obdurate; as, a rocky bosom. Shak. Rocky Mountain locust (Zoöl.), the Western locust, or grasshopper. See Grasshopper. -- Rocky Mountain sheep. (Zoöl.) See Bighorn.