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A turn or turning; a bend; a curve; flexure; meander; as, the windings of a road or stream. To nurse the saplings tall, and curl the grove With ringlets quaint, and wanton windings wove. Milton.

In a winding manner.

A material used for grinding, as emery, sand, powdered glass, etc.

instrument of horn used for collecting painters' colors on the stone in the process of grinding.

A circuit; a winding. Hence: Circuitous way or proceeding; quibble; circumlocution; indirect mode of speech. After many ambages, perspicuously define what this melancholy is. Burton.

A woman's headband (sometimes of metal), for binding the front hair.

A state of being anfractuous, or full of windings and turnings; sinuosity. The anfractuosities of his intellect and temper. Macaulay.

Winding; full of windings and turnings; sinuous; tortuous; as, the anfractuous spires of a born. -- An*frac"tu*ous*ness, n.

A mazy winding.

w, an instrument, said to have been invented by Archimedes, for raising water, formed by winding a flexible tube round a cylinder in the form of a screw. When the screw is placed in an inclined position, and the lower end immersed in water, by causing the screw to revolve, the water is raised to the upper end. Francis.…

ormerly hung fore and aft outside of a ship's upper works on holidays. Arming press (Bookbinding), a press for stamping titles and designs on the covers of books.

The act of ascertaining; a reducing to certainty; a finding out by investigation; discovery. The positive ascertainment of its limits. Burke.

A verdict or finding of a jury upon such writ.

The act of binding; restriction; also, obligation. Milton.

Binding; astringent. -- n.

Drawing together the tissues; binding; contracting; -- opposed to laxative; as, astringent medicines; a butter and astringent taste; astringent fruit.

A transformer in which part of the primary winding is used as a secondary winding, or vice versa; -- called also a compensator or balancing coil.

A hound too noisy on finding a good scent.

ounds, as of voices or languages. That babel of strange heathen languages. Hammond. The grinding babel of the street. R. L. Stevenson.

ngagement, or contest; to recede. [Colloq.] Cleon at first . . . was willing to go; but, finding that he [Nicias] was in earnest, he tried to back out. Jowett (Thucyd. )