Search the Dictionary

To make fine; to dress finically. [Obs.] Hath so pared and finified them [his feet.] B. Jonson.

The quality of being fit; adjustment; adaptedness; as of dress to the person of the wearer.

One who fits or makes to fit; esp.: (a) One who tries on, and adjusts, articles of dress. (b) One who fits or adjusts the different parts of machinery to each other.

ple; flash men or women; -- applied especially to thieves, gamblers, and prostitutes that dress in a showy way and wear much cheap jewelry. Flash house, a house frequented by flash people, as thieves and whores; hence, a brothel. "A gang of footpads, reveling with their favorite beauties at a flash house." Macaulay.…

Showy; gay; gaudy; as, a flashy dress.

acidulated liquids, and prepared for bleaching and spinning like cotton. Knight. -- Flax dresser, one who breaks and swingles flax, or prepares it for the spinner. -- Flax mill, a mill or factory where flax is spun or linen manufactured. -- Flax puller, a machine for pulling flax plants in the field. -- Flax wench.…

An ornamental appendage to the skirt of a woman's dress, consisting of a strip gathered and sewed on by its upper edge around the skirt, and left hanging.

for scattering flour; a dredging box. -- Flour dredge or dredger, a flour box. -- Flour dresser, a mashine for sorting and distributing flour according to grades of fineness. -- Flour mill, a mill for grinding and sifting flour.

Dressed with garlands of flowers. [Poetic & Rare] Milton.

A hook dressed in imitation of a fly, -- used for fishing. "The fur-wrought fly." Gay.

A kind of tall headdress formerly worn. Addison.

terfeits folly; a professional jester or buffoon; a retainer formerly kept to make sport, dressed fantastically in motley, with ridiculous accouterments. Can they think me . . . their fool or jester Milton. April fool, Court fool, etc. See under April, Court, etc. -- Fool's cap, a cap or hood to which bells were usual…

One whose ambition it is to gain admiration by showy dress; a coxcomb; an inferior dandy.

The behavior, dress, or other indication of a fop; coxcombry; affectation of show; showy folly.

Foplike; characteristic of a top in dress or manners; making an ostentatious display of gay clothing; affected in manners.

The caudal forceps-shaped appendage of earwigs and some other insects. See Earwig. Dressing forceps. See under Dressing.

piece, a front piece, as the flap in the fore part of a sidesaddle, to guard the rider's dress. -- Fore plane, a carpenter's plane, in size and use between a jack plane and a smoothing plane. Knight. -- Fore reading, previous perusal. [Obs.] Hales. -- Fore rent, in Scotland, rent payable before a crop is gathered.…

That part of a headdress that is in front; the top of a periwig.

ethodical; of a prescribed form; exact; prim; stiff; ceremonious; as, a man formal in his dress, his gait, his conversation. A cold-looking, formal garden, cut into angles and rhomboids. W. Irwing. She took off the formal cap that confined her hair. Hawthorne.

The dress prescribed for any body of men, academical, municipal, or sacerdotal. [Obs.] The doctors attending her in their formalities as far as Shotover. Fuller.