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A gull; the mew.

small European merganser (Mergus albellus) which has a white crest; -- called also smee, smee duck, white merganser, and white nun.

r less; a certain quantity or degree; a part, more or less; something. These salts have somewhat of a nitrous taste. Grew. Somewhat of his good sense will suffer, in this transfusion, and much of the beauty of his thoughts will be lost. Dryden.

At some indefinite time. [R.]

In some place unknown or not specified; in one place or another. "Somewhere nigh at hand." Milton.

Once; for a time. Though, under color of shepherds, somewhile There crept in wolves, full of fraund and guile. Spenser.

To some indeterminate place; to some place or other. Driven by the winds of temptation somewhither. Barrow.

To transmute; to transform; to metamorphose. [Archaic] Chaucer. Spenser. To transmew thyself from a holy hermit into a sinful forester. Sir W. Scott.

To release from confinement or restraint. Keats.

An edentate mammal, of the genus Orycteropus, somewhat resembling a pig, common in some parts of Southern Africa. It burrows in the ground, and feeds entirely on ants, which it catches with its long, slimy tongue.

To make sour or acid in a moderate degree; to sour somewhat. Arbuthnot.

Having the qualities of an ague; somewhat cold or shivering; chilly; shaky. Her aguish love now glows and burns. Granville.

A hard, compact variety of carbonate of lime, somewhat translucent, or of banded shades of color; stalagmite. The name is used in this sense by Pliny. It is sometimes distinguished as oriental alabaster.

A genus of fleshy Alcyonaria, its polyps somewhat resembling flowers with eight fringed rays. The term was also formerly used for certain species of sponges.

A fine, deep red ocher, somewhat purplish, found in Spain. It is the sil atticum of the ancients. Under the name of Indian red it is used for polishing glass and silver.

Somewhat like alum.

Seed of the Hibiscus abelmoschus, somewhat resembling millet, brought from Egypt and the West Indies, and having a flavor like that of musk; musk seed. Chambers.

To move somewhat like an ambling horse; to go easily or without hard shocks. The skipping king, he ambled up and down. Shak. Sir, your wit ambles well; it goes easily. Shak.

as, amic acid; phosphamic acid. Amic acid (Chem.), one of a class of nitrogenized acids somewhat resembling amides.

le. It is used before nouns of the singular number only, and signifies one, or any, but somewhat less emphatically. In such expressions as "twice an hour," "once an age," a shilling an ounce (see 2d A, 2), it has a distributive force, and is equivalent to each, every.