Search the Dictionary

h or state; the activity appropriate to any business or profession. Tradesmen . . . going about their functions. Shak. The malady which made him incapable of performing his regal functions. Macaulay.

A tumult; a bustle; unnecessary or annoying ado about trifles. Byron. Zealously, assiduously, and with a minimum of fuss or noise Carlyle.

Making a fuss; disposed to make an unnecessary ado about trifles; overnice; fidgety. Not at all fussy about his personal appearance. R. G. White.

To walk about; to rove or go about, without purpose; hence, to run wild; to be uncontrolled. "The gadding vine." Milton. Why gaddest thou about so much to change thy way Jer. ii. 36.

One who roves about idly, a rambling gossip.

Going about much, needlessly or without purpose. Envy is a gadding passion, and walketh the streets. Bacon. The good nuns would check her gadding tongue. Tennyson. Gadding car, in quarrying, a car which carries a drilling machine so arranged as to drill a line of holes.

Gadding about. [Obs.]

To play the beau; to wait upon the ladies; also, to roam about for pleasure without any definite plan. [Slang] Dickens.

A West Indian lizard (Celestus occiduus), about a foot long, imagined by the natives to be venomous.

A skipping or leaping about in frolic; a hop; a sportive prank. Dryden.

Act of gazing about; sightseeing. [Prov. Eng.]

To ornament, as a dish, with something laid about it; as, a dish garnished with parsley.

Talking much, especially about commonplace or trivial things; talkative; loquacious. The most garrulous people on earth. De Quincey.

m a book. Knight. -- Gathering coal, a lighted coal left smothered in embers over night, about which kindling wood is gathered in the morning. -- Gathering hoop, a hoop used by coopers to draw together the ends of barrel staves, to allow the hoops to be slipped over them. -- Gathering peat. (a) A piece of peat used…

A Venetian coin, worth about three English farthings, or one and a half cents. [Obs.]

bright stars Castor and Pollux; also, the third sign of the zodiac, which the sun enters about May 20th.

s. The dance is the chief rite of the Ghost-dance, or Messiah, religion, which originated about 1890 in the doctrines of the Piute Wovoka, the Indian Messiah, who taught that the time was drawing near when the whole Indian race, the dead with the living, should be reunited to live a life of millennial happiness upon a…

Having in the head a sensation of whirling or reeling about; having lost the power of preserving the balance of the body, and therefore wavering and inclined to fall; lightheaded; dizzy. By giddy head and staggering legs betrayed. Tate.

The flesh under or about the chin. Swift.

diameter of the ring, while the ring itself is so pivoted to its support that it can turn about a diameter at right angles to the first. Gimbal joint (Mach.), a universal joint embodying the principle of the gimbal. -- Gimbal ring, a single gimbal, as that by which the cockeye of the upper millstone is supported on th…