Search the Dictionary

A wheel which regulates the beats or pulses of a watch or chronometer, answering to the pendulum of a clock; -- often called simply a balance.

The defect of stammering; also, a kind of incomplete pronunciation.

Destitute of the natural or common covering on the head or top, as of hair, feathers, foliage, trees, etc.; as, a bald head; a bald oak. On the bald top of an eminence. Wordsworth.

A smokeless powder containing equal parts of soluble nitrocellulose and nitroglycerin.

An ornamental covering, as of carpet or leather, for a bench or form.

The margin of a watercourse; the rising ground bordering a lake, river, or sea, or forming the edge of a cutting, or other hollow. Tiber trembled underneath her banks. Shak.

To delude or trick, -- esp. by way of jest. [Obs.] We diverted ourselves with bantering several poor scholars with hopes of being at least his lordship's chaplain. De Foe.

A French school of the middle of the 19th century centering in the village of Barbizon near the forest of Fontainebleau. Its members went straight to nature in disregard of academic tradition, treating their subjects faithfully and with poetic feeling for color, light, and atmosphere. It is exemplified, esp. in landsca…

The exterior covering of the trunk and branches of a tree; the rind.

Without clothes or covering; stripped of the usual covering; naked; as, his body is bare; the trees are bare.

Without covering; nakedly.

To abrade or rub off any outer covering from; as to bark one's heel.

Any cirriped crustacean adhering to rocks, floating timber, ships, etc., esp. (a) the sessile species (genus Balanus and allies), and (b) the stalked or goose barnacles (genus Lepas and allies). See Cirripedia, and Goose barnacle. Barnacle eater (Zoöl.), the orange filefish. -- Barnacle scale (Zoöl.), a bark louse (Ce…

ens; oak barrens. They are not necessarily sterile, and are often fertile. [Amer.] J. Pickering.

tice of trafficking by exchange of commodities; an exchange of goods. The spirit of huckstering and barter. Burke.

ied round the walls of a room and touching the floor, to form a base and protect the plastering; -- also called washboard (in England), mopboard, and scrubboard.

phyton, having the arms much branched. See Astrophyton. -- Basket hilt, a hilt with a covering wrought like basketwork to protect the hand. Hudibras. Hence, Baskethilted, a. -- Basket work, work consisting of plaited osiers or twigs. -- Basket worm (Zoöl.), a lepidopterous insect of the genus Thyridopteryx and allie…

A wicker basket, with a covering or hood over one end, in which young children are placed as in a cradle.

Of an unusual make or proportion; as, a bastard musket; a bastard culverin. [Obs.]

the Atlantic and preserved in alcohol. He supposed that it was free living protoplasm, covering a large part of the ocean bed. It is now known that the substance is of chemical, not of organic, origin.