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g my bow. Goldsmith. Yet knows not how to find the uncertain place, And blunders on, and staggers every pace. Dryden. To blunder on. (a) To continue blundering. (b) To find or reach as if by an accident involving more or less stupidity, -- applied to something desirable; as, to blunder on a useful discovery.…

The stage in a theater; as, to go upon the boards, to enter upon the theatrical profession.

An animal (as a horse or dog) with a short tail. Rag, tag, and bobtail, the rabble.

Profit; gain; advantage; use. [Obs.] Then talk no more of flight, it is no boot. Shak. To boot, in addition; over and above; besides; as a compensation for the difference of value between things bartered. Helen, to change, would give an eye to boot. Shak. A man's heaviness is refreshed long before he comes to drunkenne…

Advantage; gain; gain by plunder; booty. [Obs.] Sir. J. Harrington.

Unavailing; unprofitable; useless; without advantage or success. Chaucer. I'll follow him no more with bootless prayers. Shak. -- Boot"less*ly, adv. -- Boot"less*ness, n.

The base or servile tenure by which a bordar held his cottage.

A villein who rendered menial service for his cottage; a cottier. The cottar, the bordar, and the laborer were bound to aid in the work of the home farm. J. R. Green.

Something deposited as security; a pledge; a surety; a hostage. [Obs.] Ye may retain as borrows my two priests. Sir W. Scott.

A chamber or a cottage. [Obs.] Chaucer.

A rustic cottage or abode; poetically, an attractive abode or retreat. Shenstone. B. Johnson.

theater, or other place of public amusement. Laughed at by the pit, box, galleries, nay, stage. Dorset. The boxes and the pit are sovereign judges. Dryden.

act as a boy; -- in allusion to the former practice of boys acting women's parts on the stage. I shall see Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness. Shak.

(Zoöl.) A peculiar early larval stage of certain starfishes, having a bilateral structure, and swimming by means of bands of vibrating cilia.

A young salmon or parr, in the stage in which it has transverse black bands, as if burned by a gridiron.

k. Close breeding, In and in breeding, breeding from a male and female from the same parentage. -- Cross breeding, breeding from a male and female of different lineage. -- Good breeding, politeness; genteel deportment.

Motionless; destitute of breezes. A stagnant, breezeless air becalms my soul. Shenstone.

Of or relating to Brittany, or Bretagne, in France. -- n.

Broth or pottage. [Obs.] Let them of their Bonner's "beef" and "broth" make what brewis they please for their credulous guests. Bp. Hall.

pon the object spanned, as in engraving, watchmaking, etc., or which forms a platform or staging over which something passes or is conveyed.