Search the Dictionary

To make briefer; to shorten; to abridge; to reduce by contraction or omission, especially of words written or spoken. It is one thing to abbreviate by contracting, another by cutting off. Bacon.

In a state of glowing excitement or ardent desire. The young Cambridge democrats were all ablaze to assist Torrijos. Carlyle.

See Abridge. [Obs.]

The act abridging, or the state of being abridged; diminution; lessening; reduction or deprivation; as, an abridgment of pleasures or of expenses.

To epitomize; to abridge. Franklin.

e to side; athwart; crosswise, or in a direction opposed to the length; quite over; as, a bridge laid across a river. Dryden. To come across, to come upon or meet incidentally. Freeman. -- To go across the country, to go by a direct course across a region without following the roads.

nchor, as an arrangement of timber to hold a dam fast; a contrivance to hold the end of a bridge cable, or other similar part; a contrivance used by founders to hold the core of a mold in place.

Something which holds like an anchor; a hold; as, the anchorages of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Any place covered by an arch; an archway; as, to pass into the arch of a bridge.

The art or science of building; especially, the art of building houses, churches, bridges, and other structures, for the purposes of civil life; -- often called civil architecture. Many other architectures besides Gothic. Ruskin.

men, pitch, lime, and gravel, used for forming pavements, and as a water-proof cement for bridges, roofs, etc.; asphaltic cement. Artificial asphalt is prepared from coal tar, lime, sand, etc. Asphalt stone, Asphalt rock, a limestone found impregnated with asphalt.

A dull, heavy, stupid fellow; a dolt. Shak. Asses' Bridge. Etym: [L. pons asinorum.] The fifth proposition of the first book of Euclid, "The angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are equal to one another." [Sportive] "A schoolboy, stammering out his Asses' Bridge." F. Harrison. -- To make an ass of one's self, t…

One of the beams connecting the successive supports of a trestle bridge or bateau bridge.

rs topped by a rail, serving as an open parapet, as along the edge of a balcony, terrace, bridge, staircase, or the eaves of a building.

rs topped by a rail, serving as an open parapet, as along the edge of a balcony, terrace, bridge, staircase, or the eaves of a building.

to obstruct; as, the workmen barricaded the streets of Paris. The further end whereof [a bridge] was barricaded with barrels. Hakluyt.

aratus on the principle of the seesaw, in which one end rises as the other falls. Bascule bridge, a counterpoise or balanced drawbridge, which is opened by sinking the counterpoise and thus lifting the footway into the air.

used on the Canadian lakes and rivers. [Written also, but less properly, batteau.] Bateau bridge, a floating bridge supported by bateaux.

merly, one who paid for nothing but what he called for, answering nearly to a sizar at Cambridge. Wright.

mullions of a window, etc.; one of the main divisions of any structure, as the part of a bridge between two piers.