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An area of four sides, generally with houses on each side; sometimes, a solid block of houses; also, an open place or area for public use, as at the meeting or intersection of two or more streets. The statue of Alexander VII. stands in the large square of the town. Addison.

A culture made by inoculating a solid medium, as gelatin, with the puncture of a needle or wire. The growths are usually of characteristic form.

The fixed, firm part of a body, which supports it or gives it strength and solidity; as, the bones are the stamina of animal bodies; the ligneous parts of trees are the stamina which constitute their strength.

The likeness of a living being sculptured or modeled in some solid substance, as marble, bronze, or wax; an image; as, a statue of Hercules, or of a lion. I will raise her statue in pure gold. Shak.

To render impervious or solid by driving with a calking iron; as, to stave lead, or the joints of pipes into which lead has been run. To stave and tail, in bear baiting, (to stave) to interpose with the staff, doubtless to stop the bear; (to tail) to hold back the dog by the tail. Nares.

Solidity; weight. [R.] Camden.

lso of some vegetable fats, as the butter of cacao. It is especially characterized by its solidity, so that when present in considerable quantity it materially increases the hardness, or raises the melting point, of the fat, as in mutton tallow. Chemically, it is a compound of glyceryl with three molecules of stearic a…

The more solid ingredient of certain volatile oils; -- contrasted with elæoptene.

ood or iron which is intended to receive an upright shaft; specif., a block of wood, or a solid platform upon the keelson, supporting the heel of the mast.

A combining form meaning solid, hard, firm, as in stereo- chemistry, stereography.

Of or pertaining to the generation of electricity by means of solid bodies alone; as, a stereoelectric current is one obtained by means of solids, without any liquid.

or picture which represents objects in such a way as to give the impression of relief or solidity; also, a stereograph.

The art of delineating the forms of solid bodies on a plane; a branch of solid geometry which shows the construction of all solids which are regularly defined.

An instrument for measuring the solid contents of a body, or the capacity of a vessel; a volumenometer.

The solid or insoluble portion of the cell protoplasm. See Hygroplasm.

An optical instrument for giving to pictures the appearance of solid forms, as seen in nature. It combines in one, through a bending of the rays of light, two pictures, taken for the purpose from points of view a little way apart. It is furnished with two eyeglasses, and by refraction or reflection the pictures are sup…

The science or art of cutting solids into certain figures or sections, as arches, and the like; especially, the art of stonecutting.

hydraulic press, an hydraulic press producing pressure or motion by the introduction of a solid substance (as a long rod, or a cord wound on a roller) into a cylinder previously filled with a liquid.

A block of wood; something fixed and solid; a pillar; a firm support; a post. All our fathers worshiped stocks and stones. Milton. Item, for a stock of brass for the holy water, seven shillings; which, by the canon, must be of marble or metal, and in no case of brick. Fuller.

A system of working in ore, etc., when it lies not in strata or veins, but in solid masses, so as to be worked in chambers or stories.