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itted or the sensation imparted to the fingers. Percussion is said to be immediate if the blow is directly upon the body; if some interventing substance, as a pleximeter, is, used, it is called mediate. Center of percussion. See under Center. -- Percussion bullet, a bullet containing a substance which is exploded by p…

Capable of being blown through. [Obs.]

To blow through. [Obs.] Harvey.

The blow which drives the shuttle, -- the rate of speed of a loom being reckoned as so many picks per minute; hence, in describing the fineness of a fabric, a weft thread; as, so many picks to an inch. Pick dressing (Arch.), in cut stonework, a facing made by a pointed tool, leaving the surface in little pits or depres…

That which smites, wounds, or troubles; a blow; a calamity; any afflictive evil or torment; a great trail or vexation. Shak. And men blasphemed God for the plague of hail. Wyclif. The different plague of each calamity. Shak.

To make smooth or plane, as a metallic surface; to condense, toughen, and polish by light blows with a hammer.

, elastic plate, as of ivory, bone, or rubber, placed in contact with body to receive the blow, in examination by mediate percussion. [Written also plexometer.]

f a flat wooden block with a long iron handle, used for flattening out split cylinders of blown glass.

The act of inflating the middle ear by blowing air up the nose during the act of swallowing; -- so called from Prof. Politzer of Vienna, who first practiced it.

A blow or thump. Halliwell. -- a.

ackney, a hired post horse. Sir H. Wotton. -- Post horn, a horn, or trumpet, carried and blown by a carrier of the public mail, or by a coachman. -- Post horse, a horse stationed, intended, or used for the post. -- Post hour, hour for posting letters. Dickens. -- Post office. (a) An office under governmental superi…

To strike repeatedly with some heavy instrument; to beat. With cruel blows she pounds her blubbered cheeks. Dryden.

power of puffing up its body. Called also hog-nose snake, flathead, spreading adder, and blowing adder. Puff bird (Zoöl.), any bird of the genus Bucco, or family Bucconidæ. They are small birds, usually with dull-colored and loose plumage, and have twelve tail feathers. See Barbet (b).

gnath fish which inflates its body, as the species of Tetrodon and Diodon; -- called also blower, puff-fish, swellfish, and globefish.

A thrust or blow. [Colloq.]

he necessity imposed upon man of toiling for his subsistence. I. Taylor. We shall dread a blow from the punitive hand. Bagehot.

ade by the notion of a fluid; an eddy; a ripple. Whose stream an easy breath doth seem to blow, Which on the sparkling gravel runs in purles, As though the waves had been of silver curls. Drayton.

The science of blowpipe analysis.

s luster; -- so called from its becoming grass-green on being subjected to heat under the blowpipe.

ped by the use of heat; pertaining to the characters of minerals when examined before the blowpipe; as, the pyrognostic characters of galena.