Search the Dictionary

The common yellow water lily (Nuphar advena).

Wearing spatterdashes. [Colloq.] Thackeray.

Coverings for the legs, to protect them from water and mud; long gaiters.

A spatula.

A kind of catchfly (Silene inflata) which is sometimes frothy from the action of captured insects.

An implement shaped like a knife, flat, thin, and somewhat flexible, used for spreading paints, fine plasters, drugs in compounding prescriptions, etc. Cf. Palette knife, under Palette.

Shaped like spatula, or like a battledoor, being roundish, with a long, narrow, linear base. [Also written spathulate.]

To soil by spattering; to sprinkle, esp. with dirty water, mud, or anything which will leave foul spots or stains.

Having a crisped appearance; irregularly curled or twisted.

external or internal. Few men can look down from a great height without creepings and crispations. O. W. Holmes.

The state of being crispate.

An ill-natured person. [Colloq.] "Crosspatch, draw the latch." Mother Goose.

Ending in a point.

Same as Dispatch.

quickly; to make a speedy end of; to finish; to perform. Ere we put ourselves in arms, dispatch we The business we have talked of. Shak. [The] harvest men . . . almost in one fair day dispatcheth all the harvest work. Robynson (More's Utopia).

One who dispatches.

haste; intent on speedy execution of business or any task; indicating haste; quick; as, dispatchful looks. Milton.

The act of dispatching. [Obs.] State Trials (1529).

Lack of sympathy; want of passion; apathy. [R.] Many discrepancies and some dispathies between us. Southey.

A name given to a group of minerals, closely related in crystalline form, and all silicates of alumina with either potash, soda, lime, or, in one case, baryta. They occur in crystals and crystalline masses, vitreous in luster, and breaking rather easily in two directions at right angles to each other, or nearly so. The…