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To adopt a foreign or barbarous mode of speech. The ill habit . . . of wretched barbarizing against the Latin and Greek idiom, with their untutored Anglicisms. Milton.

he Cheiroptera, an order of flying mammals, in which the wings are formed by a membrane stretched between the elongated fingers, legs, and tail. The common bats are small and insectivorous. See Cheiroptera and Vampire. Bat tick (Zoöl.), a wingless, dipterous insect of the genus Nycteribia, parasitic on bats.…

zontal timbers of a building or ship. The beams of a vessel are strong pieces of timber stretching across from side to side to support the decks. Totten.

A conformation like a bench; a long stretch of flat ground, or a kind of natural terrace, near a lake or river. Bench mark (Leveling), one of a number of marks along a line of survey, affixed to permanent objects, to show where leveling staffs were placed. -- Bench of bishops, the whole body of English prelates assemb…

A portable boat made of skins stretched on a frame. [Alaska] The Century.

counter; to remain firm under (a hardship); to endure; to suffer; to undergo. Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are, That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm. Shak.

The stretch which a ship makes in one tack.

d the next course of bricks with their lengths parallel to the face of the wall, called stretchers; Flemish bond (Fig.2), where each course consists of headers and stretchers alternately, so laid as always to break joints; Cross bond, which differs from the English by the change of the second stretcher line so that its…

A line of connected floating timbers stretched across a river, or inclosing an area of water, to keep saw logs, etc., from floating away. Boom iron, one of the iron rings on the yards through which the studding-sail booms traverse. -- The booms, that space on the upper deck of a ship between the foremast and mainmast,…

An instrument to stretch and widen the leg of a boot, consisting of two pieces, together shaped like a leg, between which, when put into the boot, a wedge is driven. The pretty boots trimly stretched on boottrees. Thackeray.

An appliance consisting of an elastic rod, with a number of horse hairs stretched from end to end of it, used in playing on a stringed instrument.

A stock at each end of a seine to keep it stretched.

he person to be rescued, is hung by short ropes from a block which runs upon the hawser stretched from the ship to the shore, and is drawn to land by hauling lines. -- Breeches pipe, a forked pipe forming two branches united at one end. -- Knee breeches, breeches coming to the knee, and buckled or fastened there; sma…

A wretch; -- sometimes used humorously or in playful disparagement. [Low]

A sudden opening, as of landscape; a stretch; an expanse. [R.] "A fine burst of country." Jane Austen.

Captive; wretched; unfortunate. [Obs.] Chaucer.

Suffering calamity; wretched; miserable. [Obs.] Ten thousands of calamitous persons. South.

of kid skin. Fig.: Used as a symbol of flexibility. [Obs.] Here's wit of cheveril, that stretches from an inch narrow to an ell broad. Shak.

hrill sound by pecular organs in the under side of the abdomen, consisting of a pair of stretched membranes, acted upon by powerful muscles. A noted American species (C. septendecim) is called the seventeen year locust. Another common species is the dogday cicada.

rattle; to click. We heard Mr.Hodson's whip clacking on the ahoulders of the poor little wretches. Thackeray.