Search the Dictionary

An impure earthy or coaly bitumen, which emits a highly fetid odor when burning.

eir long tapering tail, which spiracles at the tip, and for their ability to live in very impure and salt waters; -- also called drone fly.

A heathen; a pagan. [Obs.] No better reported than impure ethnic and lay dogs. Milton.

The impure spirit which comes over first and last in the distillation of whisky; -- the former being called the strong faints, and the latter, which is much more abundant, the weak faints. This crude spirit is much impregnated with fusel oil. Ure.

Foul with extraneous or impure substances; abounding with sediment or excrementitious matter; muddy; thick; turbid. Both his hands most filthy feculent. Spenser.

charcoal, through which water or other liquid may passed to cleanse it from the solid or impure matter held in suspension; a chamber or device containing such substance; a strainer; also, a similar device for purifying air. Filter bed, a pond, the bottom of which is a filter composed of sand gravel. -- Filter gallery…

Defiled with filth, whether material or moral; nasty; dirty; polluted; foul; impure; obscene. "In the filthy-mantled pool." Shak. He which is filthy let him be filthy still. Rev. xxii. 11.

A massive, somewhat impure variety of quartz, in color usually of a gray to brown or nearly black, breaking with a conchoidal fracture and sharp edge. It is very hard, and strikes fire with steel.

An impure resin of turpentine, hardened on the outside of pine trees by the spontaneous evaporation of its essential oil. When purified, it is called yellow pitch, white pitch, or Burgundy pitch.

A trade name for a dyestuff, consisting essentially of impure fuchsine.

, Or originating in, animal or sensual appetites; hence, coarse, vulgar, low, obscene, or impure. The terms which are delicate in one age become gross in the next. Macaulay.

An insatiable thing or person. That sink of filth, that guzzle most impure. Marston.

Impure ore; dirty ore.

e bones of calves. They afford a kind of jelly. Hebert. -- Salt of hartshorn (Chem.), an impure solid carbonate of ammonia, obtained by the destructive distillation of hartshorn, or any kind of bone; volatile salts. Brande & C.-- Spirits of hartshorn (Chem.), a solution of ammonia in water; -- so called because former…

The condition or quality of being impure in any sense; defilement; foulness; adulteration. Profaneness, impurity, or scandal, is not wit. Buckminster.

low). -- Bog iron, bog ore; limonite. See Bog ore, under Bog. -- Cast iron (Metal.), an impure variety of iron, containing from three to six percent of carbon, part of which is united with a part of the iron, as a carbide, and the rest is uncombined, as graphite. It there is little free carbon, the product is white i…

An opaque, impure variety of quartz, of red, yellow, and other dull colors, breaking with a smooth surface. It admits of a high polish, and is used for vases, seals, snuff boxes, etc. When the colors are in stripes or bands, it is called striped or banded jasper. The Egyptian pebble is a brownish yellow jasper. Jasper…

Marked with spots or maculæ; blotched; hence, defiled; impure; as, most maculate thoughts. Shak.

An impure yellow sulphate of iron; yellow copperas or copiapite.

try from which the people of a colony derive their origin. -- Mother liquor (Chem.), the impure or complex residual solution which remains after the salts readily or regularly crystallizing have been removed. -- Mother queen, the mother of a reigning sovereign; a queen mother. -- Mother tongue. (a) A language from w…