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An order of marine sponges, containing calcareous spicules. See Porifera.

An order of sponges in which the skeleton consists of horny fibers. It includes all the commercial sponges.

To sprinkle, as with water from a sponge. [Poetic & Rare] [Written also dispunge.] O sovereign mistress of true melancholy, The poisonous damp of night disponge upon me. Shak.

An order of sponges having a fibrous skeleton, including the commercial sponges.

A siliceous sponge, of the genus Hyalonema, and allied genera; -- so called from their glassy fibers or spicules; -- called also vitreous sponge. See Glass-rope, and Euplectella.

An order of vitreous sponges, having glassy six-rayed, siliceous spicules; -- called also Hexactinellinæ.

The fresh-water sponges. See Spongilla.

Same as Silicoidea.

A division of sponges including those which have independent siliceous spicules.

To suck up; to drink in; to imbibe; as a sponge or as the lacteals of the body. Bacon.

g flowers with eight fringed rays. The term was also formerly used for certain species of sponges.

A spongy, combustible substance, prepared from fungus (Boletus and Polyporus) which grows on old trees; German tinder; punk. It has been employed as a styptic by surgeons, but its common use is as tinder, for which purpose it is prepared by soaking it in a strong solution of niter. Ure.

Animals without a mouth or regular internal organs, as the sponges.

r small siliceous spicule having a denticulated wheel at each end; -- found in freshwater sponges.

swelling. Kirby. Ampullaceous sac (Zoöl.), one of the peculiar cavities in the tissues of sponges, containing the zooidal cells.

One of the anchor-shaped spicules of certain sponges; also, one of the calcareous spinules of certain Holothurians, as in species of Synapta. Anchor ice. See under Ice. -- Anchor ring. (Math.) Same as Annulus, 2 (b). -- Anchor stock (Naut.), the crossbar at the top of the shank at right angles to the arms. -- The an…

An instrument for cleansing the ear, consisting of a small piece of sponge on an ivory or bone handle.

A fresh-water sponge (Spongilla), common in the north of Europe, the powder of which is used to take away the livid marks of bruises.

Readily imbibing fluids or moisture; spongy; as, bibulous blotting paper.

A quagmire filled with decayed moss and other vegetable matter; wet spongy ground where a heavy body is apt to sink; a marsh; a morass. Appalled with thoughts of bog, or caverned pit, Of treacherous earth, subsiding where they tread. R. Jago.