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A wedgeshaped or triangular piece of cloth, canvas, etc., sewed into a garment, sail, etc., to give greater width at a particular part.

The act of progressing by regular steps or orderly arrangement; the state of being graded or arranged in ranks; as, the gradation of castes.

By regular steps or gradations; of or pertaining to gradation.

Rising or descending by regular degrees of inclination; as, the gradient line of a railroad.

degrees; advancing, step by step, as in ascent or descent or from one state to another; regularly progressive; slow; as, a gradual increase of knowledge; a gradual decline. Creatures animate with gradual life Of growth, sense, reason, all summed up in man. Milton.

The quality or state of being gradual; regular progression or gradation; slowness. The gradualness of this movement. M. Arnold. The gradualness of growth is a characteristic which strikes the simplest observer. H. Drummond.

To mark with degrees; to divide into regular steps, grades, or intervals, as the scale of a thermometer, a scheme of punishment or rewards, etc.

An instrument for dividing any line, right or curve, into small, regular intervals.

The fruit of certain species of passion flower (esp. Passiflora quadrangularis) found in Brazil and the West Indies. It is as large as a child's head, and is a good dessert fruit. The fruit of Passiflora edulis is used for flavoring ices.

ancient grottoes; grottolike; wildly or strangely formed; whimsical; extravagant; of irregular forms and proportions; fantastic; ludicrous; antic. "Grotesque design." Dryden. "Grotesque incidents." Macaulay.

er, crowd, or throng; an assemblage, either of persons or things, collected without any regular form or arrangement; as, a group of men or of trees; a group of isles.

An irregular mode of carrying on war, by the constant attacks of independent bands, adopted in the north of Spain during the Peninsular war.

To run or flow in a broken, irregular, noisy current, as water from a bottle, or a small stream among pebbles or stones. Pure gurgling rills the lonely desert trace, And waste their music on the savage race. Young.

e outside face of the gutter in a decorative fashion, or by crowning it with ornaments, regularly spaced, like a diminutive battlement. -- Gutter plane, a carpenter's plane with a rounded bottom for planing out gutters. -- Gutter snipe, a neglected boy running at large; a street Arab. [Slang] -- Gutter stick (Printin…

A subordinary of triangular form having one of its angles at the fess point and the opposite aide at the edge of the escutcheon. When there is only one gyron on the shield it is bounded by two linea drawn from the fess point, one horizontally to the dexter side, and one to the dexter chief corner.

To cut irregulary, without skill or definite purpose; to notch; to mangle by repeated strokes of a cutting instrument; as, to hack a post. My sword hacked like a handsaw. Shak.

s curious side appendages, and feeds on fruit trees. -- Hag's tooth (Naut.), an ugly irregularity in the pattern of matting or pointing.

To have an irregular rhythm; to be defective. The blank verse shall halt for it. Shak.

r draught; to equip with harness, as a horse. Also used figuratively. Harnessed to some regular profession. J. C. Shairp. Harnessed antelope. (Zoöl.) See Guib. -- Harnessed moth (Zoöl.), an American bombycid moth (Arctia phalerata of Harris), having, on the fore wings, stripes and bands of buff on a black ground.…

A musical instrument consisting of a triangular frame furnished with strings and sometimes with pedals, held upright, and played with the fingers.