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The highest degree of inconvenience, pain, or suffering; greatest need or peril; extreme need; necessity. Divers evils and extremities that follow upon such a compulsion shall here be set in view. Milton. Upon mere extremity he summoned this last Parliament. Milton.

The hole through the head of a needle.

lls goods and transacts business for others in commission; a commission merchant or consignee. He may be a home factor or a foreign factor. He may buy and sell in his own name, and he is intrusted with the possession and control of the goods; and in these respects he differs from a broker. Story. Wharton. My factor sen…

rostrate; to drop; as, a child totters and falls; a tree falls; a worshiper falls on his knees. I fell at his feet to worship him. Rev. xix. 10.

Ornamental work with a needle or hook, as embroidery, crocheting, netting, etc.

To forge or counterfeit. [Obs.] Shak. Fashioning needle (Knitting Machine), a needle used for widening or narrowing the work and thus shaping it.

s, of the same species. [R.] I am not of that feather to shake off My friend when he must need me. Shak.

appearance of a person; the whole turn or style of the body; esp., good appearance. What needeth it his feature to descrive Chaucer. Cheated of feature by dissembling nature. Shak.

The motion, or act, of carrying forward the stuff to be operated upon, as cloth to the needle in a sewing machine; or of producing progressive operation upon any material or object in a machine, as, in a turning lathe, by moving the cutting tool along or in the work.

A device for supplying steam boilers with water as needed.

balanced passenger cars around its rim; -- so called after G. W. G. Ferris, American engineer, who erected the first of its kind for the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.

The outer and usually the smaller of the two bones of the leg, or hind limb, below the knee.

venturer, especially one in quest of plunder; a freebooter; -- originally applied to buccaneers infesting the Spanish American coasts, but introduced into common English to designate the followers of Lopez in his expedition to Cuba in 1851, and those of Walker in his expedition to Nicaragua, in 1855.…

Keenness or sharpness; as, the fineness of a needle's point, or of the edge of a blade.

the furrows first formed by the infolding of the whole wall of the cerebrum. -- Fissure needle (Surg.), a spiral needle for catching together the gaping lips of wounds. Knight. -- Fissure of rolando (Anat.), the furrow separating the frontal from the parietal lobe in the cerebrum. -- Fissure of Sylvius (Anat.), a d…

To make a wry face in contempt, or to grin in scorn; to deride; to sneer; to mock; to gibe; as, to fleer and flout. To fleer and scorn at our solemnity. Shak.

; yielding to pressure; not stiff or brittle. When the splitting wind Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks. Shak.

A buccaneer; an American pirate. See Flibuster. [Obs.]

To cast in the teeth; to utter abusive language; to sneer; as, the scold began to flout and fling.

To develop; to make thrive; to expand. [Obs.] Bottoms of thread . . . which with a good needle, perhaps flourished into large works. Bacon.