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One who sings, or the instrument which plays, bass. [Written also base.] Thorough bass. See Thorough bass.

A stringed instrument of the viol family, used for playing bass. See 3d Bass, n., and Violoncello.

An instrument blown with a reed, and resembling a clarinet, but of much greater compass, embracing nearly four octaves.

A wind instrument of the double reed kind, furnished with holes, which are stopped by the fingers, and by keys, as in flutes. It forms the natural bass to the oboe, clarinet, etc.

An instrument for measuring depths, esp. one for taking soundings without a sounding line.

A backward slope in the face of a wall or of a bank; receding slope. Batter rule, an instrument consisting of a rule or frame, and a plumb line, by which the batter or slope of a wall is regulated in building.

An instrument, with a handle and a flat part covered with parchment or crossed with catgut, used to strike a shuttlecock in play; also, the play of battledoor and shuttlecock.

made or consisting of branches of the laurel. The patriot's honors and the poet's bays. Trumbull.

A pointed instrument of the dagger kind fitted on the muzzle of a musket or rifle, so as to give the soldier increased means of offense and defense.

point of the compass toward which her stern is directed. -- Beam center (Mach.), the fulcrum or pin on which the working beam of an engine vibrates. -- Beam compass, an instrument consisting of a rod or beam, having sliding sockets that carry steel or pencil points; -- used for drawing or describing large circles. -…

A barb or sharp point of an arrow or other instrument, projecting backward to prevent the head from being easily drawn out.

pe it; to beat grain, in order to force out the seeds; to beat eggs and sugar; to beat a drum. Thou shalt beat some of it [spices] very small. Ex. xxx. 36. They did beat the gold into thin plates. Ex. xxxix. 3.

An instrument for tightening the parts of a bedstead.

aves, and small white flowers. Our Lady's bedstraw, which has yellow flowers, is Galium verum. -- White bedstraw is G. mollugo.

A trumpet. [Obs.]

The backside; the rump. [Low]

A Brazilian leaf hopper (Bocydium tintinnabuliferum), remarkable for the four bell-shaped appendages of its thorax.

A lever whose two arms form a right angle, or nearly a right angle, having its fulcrum at the apex of the angle. It is used in bell pulls and in changing the direction of bell wires at angles of rooms, etc., and also in machinery.

An instrument, utensil, or machine, which, by alternate expansion and contraction, or by rise and fall of the top, draws in air through a valve and expels it through a tube for various purposes, as blowing fires, ventilating mines, or filling the pipes of an organ with wind. Bellows camera, in photography, a form of ca…

opax), distinguished by a long tubular snout, like the pipe of a bellows; -- called also trumpet fish, and snipe fish.