Search the Dictionary

Not softly. [Obs.] Great climbers fall unsoft. Spenser.

Unwieldy; unmanageable; clumsy. [Obs.] Our old limbs move [may] well be unweld. Chaucer.

antiar, is, derived from upas tree (Antiaris toxicaria). Upas tieute is prepared from a climbing plant (Strychnos Tieute).

found an urn, or earthen pot, in which there was another urn. Bp. Wilkins. His scattered limbs with my dead body burn, And once more join us in the pious urn. Dryden.

A genus of climbing orchidaceous plants natives of tropical America.

A short scale made to slide along the divisions of a graduated instrument, as the limb of a sextant, or the scale of a barometer, for indicating parts of divisions. It is so graduated that a certain convenient number of its divisions are just equal to a certain number, either one less or one more, of the divisions of t…

and their faces to the horizon, as in the Australian species of Eucalyptus. -- Vertical limb, a graduated arc attached to an instrument, as a theodolite, for measuring vertical angles. -- Vertical line. (a) (Dialing) A line perpendicular to the horizon.

Any woody climbing plant which bears grapes.

Virgin Mary, the Mother of our Lord. -- Virgin's bower (Bot.), a name given to several climbing plants of the genus Clematis, as C. Vitalba of Europe, and C. Virginiana of North America.

creeper (Bot.), a common ornamental North American woody vine (Ampelopsis quinquefolia), climbing extensively by means of tendrils; -- called also woodbine, and American ivy. [U.S.] -- Virginia fence. See Worm fence, under Fence. -- Virginia nightingale (Zoöl.), the cardinal bird. See under Cardinal. -- Virginia quai…

turning or twining; as, the voluble stem of hop plants. Voluble stem (Bot.), a stem that climbs by winding, or twining, round another body. -- Vol"u*ble*ness, n. -- Vol"u*bly, adv.

A climbing shrub (Tetracera alnifolia, or potatoria) of Western Africa, which pours out a watery sap from the freshly cut stems.

Any plant of the genus Phytocrene, climbing shrubs of Asia and Africa, the stems of which are singularly porous, and when cut stream with a limpid potable juice.

n to several plants, as: (a) The Indian pipe (see under Indian). (b) The Hoya carnosa, a climbing plant with polished, fleshy leaves. (c) Certain species of Begonia with similar foliage. -- Wax tree (Bot.) (a) A tree or shrub (Ligustrum lucidum) of China, on which certain insects make a thick deposit of a substance re…

An American climbing shrub (Celastrus scandens). It bears a profusion of yellow berrylike pods, which open in the autumn, and display the scarlet coverings of the seeds.

One of the two anterior limbs of a bird, pterodactyl, or bat. They correspond to the arms of man, and are usually modified for flight, but in the case of a few species of birds, as the ostrich, auk, etc., the wings are used only as an assistance in running or swimming. As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over…

Having the anterior limbs or hands adapted for flight, as the bats and pterodactyls.

A genus of climbing leguminous plants bearing long, pendulous clusters of pale bluish flowers.

A climbing plant having flowers of great fragrance (Lonicera Periclymenum); the honeysuckle.

ully. To-morrow, sir, I wrestle for my credit, and he that escapes me without some broken limb shall acquit him well. Shak. Another, by a fall in wrestling, started the end of the clavicle from the sternum. Wiseman.