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A lining of timber or metal around the shaft of a mine; especially, a series of cast-iron cylinders bolted together, used to enable those who sink a shaft to penetrate quicksand, water, etc., with safety.

Any bivalve mollusk which secretes a shelly tube around its siphon, as the watering-shell.

to cast off, to cease to care for. -- To turn a flange (Mech.), to form a flange on, as around a metal sheet or boiler plate, by stretching, bending, and hammering, or rolling the metal. -- To turn against. (a) To direct against; as, to turn one's arguments against himself. (b) To make unfavorable or hostile to; as,…

To wind, as one thread around another, or as any flexible substance around another body. Let me twine Mine arms about that body. Shak.

Winding around something; twisting; embracing; climbing by winding about a support; as, the hop is a twinning plant.

Hence, to form as if by winding one part around another; to wreathe; to make up. Was it not to this end That thou began'st to twist so fine a story Shak.

r of growth. Unicentral development, that form of development which takes place primarily around a single central point, as in the lowest of unicellular organisms.

One of a pair in a series of small card cylinders, arranged around a carding drum; -- so called from its fancied resemblance to the hedgehog. Knight. Urchin fish (Zoöl.), a diodon.

Hanging drapery for a bed, couch, window, or the like, especially that which hangs around a bedstead, from the bed to the floor. [Written also valence.] Valance of Venice gold in needlework. Shak.

or slip of wood, often cut into some fanciful form, and placed upon a perpendicular axis around which it moves freely. Aye undiscreet, and changing as a vane. Chaucer.

A delicate funnel-like membrane around the flagellum of certain Infusoria. See Illust. a of Protozoa.

of the anal, or crissal, feathers of a bird. -- Vent field (Gun.), a flat raised surface around a vent. -- Vent piece. (Gun.) (a) A bush. See 4th Bush, n, 2. (b) A breech block.

tile anther, which is fixed at one point to the filament, and hence is very easily turned around; a versatile toe of a bird. -- Ver"sa*tile*ly, adv. -- -- Ver"sa*tile*ness, n.

mals have a long, smooth body tapering to the base, and two separate circles of tentacles around the mouth. They form a tough, flexible, feltlike tube with a smooth internal lining, in which they dwell, whence the name.

pposed collection of particles of very subtile matter, endowed with a rapid rotary motion around an axis which was also the axis of a sun or a planet. Descartes attempted to account for the formation of the universe, and the movements of the bodies composing it, by a theory of vortices.

A ring-shaped mass of moving fluid which, by virtue of its motion of rotation around an axis disposed in circular form, attains a more or less distinct separation from the surrounding medium and has many of the properties of a solid.

Vorticellidæ. They have a more or less bell-shaped body with a circle of vibrating cilia around the oral disk. Most of the species have slender, contractile stems, either simple or branched.

d of clamp with gimlet points for holding a barrel head while the staves are being closed around it. Knight.

A sash worn by women around the waist. [R.]

ome height, and intended for defense or security, solid and permanent inclosing fence, as around a field, a park, a town, etc., also, one of the upright inclosing parts of a building or a room. The plaster of the wall of the King's palace. Dan. v. 5.