Search the Dictionary

An incurved, tapering and pointed appendage found in the flowers of the milkweed (Asclepias).

- so called because a sheet of horn covered the small, thin board of oak, or the slip of paper, on which the alphabet, digits, and often the Lord's Prayer, were written or printed; a primer. "He teaches boys the hornbook." Shak.

color. It is very pugnacious, and its sting is very severe. Its nest is constructed of a paperlike material, and the layers of comb are hung together by columns. The American white- faced hornet (V. maculata) is larger and has similar habits. Hornet fly (Zoöl.), any dipterous insect of the genus Asilus, and allied gene…

ting kindness and generosity to guests and strangers; as, hospitable rites. To where you taper cheers the vale With hospitable ray. Goldsmith.

purpose of giving a smooth and glosay surface, or to express oil, etc.; as, to hotpress paper, linen, etc.

f which a quantity of sand, water, or mercury occupies an hour in running through a small aperture unto the lower.

solutely. Agricola having sent his navy to hover on the coast. Milton. Hovering o'er the paper with her quill. Shak.

e barbels around the mouth, one tooth on the plate, and a communication between tionnasal aperture and the throat. See Hagfish. [Written also Hyperotreti.]

A paper having on it these letters, with a sum named, and duly signed; -- in use in England as an acknowledgment of a debt, and taken as evidence thereof, but not amounting to a promissory note; a due bill. Wharton. Story.

e Ice pilot (below). -- Ice pack, an irregular mass of broken and drifting ice. -- Ice paper, a transparent film of gelatin for copying or reproducing; papier glacé. -- Ice petrel (Zoöl.), a shearwater (Puffinus gelidus) of the Antarctic seas, abundant among floating ice. -- Ice pick, a sharp instrument for breakin…

To kindle or set on fire; as, to ignite paper or wood.

In a ill manner; badly; weakly. How ill this taper burns! Shak. Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates and men decay. Goldsmith.

Persons in the early church who had received baptism; in which ceremony a lighted taper was given them, as a symbol of the spiritual illumination they has received by that sacrament.

e or discredit the credibility of, as of a witness, or the validity of, as of commercial paper.

Not perforated; having no opening or aperture. Sir J. Banks.

Of superior or unusual size or excellence; as, imperial paper; imperial tea, etc. Imperial bushel, gallon, etc. See Bushel, Gallon, etc. -- Imperial chamber, the, the sovereign court of the old German empire. -- Imperial city, under the first German empire, a city having no head but the emperor. -- Imperial diet, an…

The pressure of the type on the paper, or the result of such pressure, as regards its appearance; as, a heavy impression; a clear, or a poor, impression; also, a single copy as the result of printing, or the whole edition printed at a given time. Ten impressions which his books have had. Dryden.

A license to print or publish a book, paper, etc.; also, in countries subjected to the censorship of the press, approval of that which is published.

To stamp or mark, as letters on paper, by means of type, plates, stamps, or the like; to print the mark (figures, letters, etc., upon something). Nature imprints upon whate'er we see, That has a heart and life in it, "Be free." Cowper.

the power of driving or impelling; giving an impulse; moving; impellent. Poor men! poor papers! We and they Do some impulsive force obey. Prior.