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A short bend, slope, or curve, where a hand rail or cap changes its direction.

A roving motion; course without definite direction; want of direction, rule, or method; hazard; chance; -- commonly used in the phrase at random, that is, without a settled point of direction; at hazard. Counsels, when they fly At random, sometimes hit most happily. Herrick. O, many a shaft, at random sent, Finds mark…

To sail or pass in a direction parallel to or near; as, to range the coast.

f diverging lines passing through a point, and regarded as extending indefinitely in both directions. See Half-ray. Bundle of rays. (Geom.) See Pencil of rays, below. -- Extraordinary ray (Opt.), that one or two parts of a ray divided by double refraction which does not follow the ordinary law of refraction. -- Ordin…

Any action in resisting other action or force; counter tendency; movement in a contrary direction; reverse action.

A formulary according to the directions of which things are to be taken or combined; a recipe; as, a receipt for making sponge cake. She had a receipt to make white hair black. Sir T. Browne.

; -- in distinction from a rotary engine, in which the piston travels continuously in one direction in a circular path. -- Reciprocating motion (Mech.), motion alternately backward and forward, or up and down, as of a piston rod.

To curve in an opposite or unusual direction; to bend back or down.

Curved in an opposite or uncommon direction; bent back; as, a bird with a recurved bill; flowers with recurved petals.

That which refers to something; a specific direction of the attention; as, a reference in a text-book.

The change in the direction of ray of light, heat, or the like, when it enters obliquely a medium of a different density from that through which it has previously moved. Refraction out of the rarer medium into the denser, is made towards the perpendicular. Sir I. Newton.

rescribed for management or government; prescription; a regulating principle; a governing direction; precept; law; as, the regulations of a society or a school. Regulation sword, cap, uniform, etc. (Mil.), a sword, cap, uniform, etc., of the kind or quality prescribed by the official regulations.

the reversal of the natural direction in which the current or contents flow through a tube or cavity of the body. Quain.

To pace again; to walk over again in a contrary direction.

To pass again; to pass or travel over in the opposite direction; to pass a second time; as, to repass a bridge or a river; to repass the sea.

An account or statement of the results of examination or inquiry made by request or direction; relation. "From Thetis sent as spies to make report." Waller.

(Mech.), the separation of a single force or motion into two or more which have different directions, and, taken together, are an equivalent for the single one; -- the opposite of Ant: composition of a force. -- Resolution of a nebula (Astron.), the exhibition of it to the eye by a telescope of such power as to show i…

To go back, in or over (a previous course); to go over again in a reverse direction; as, to retrace one's steps; to retrace one's proceedings.

To go in a retrograde direction; to move, or appear to move, backward, as a planet.

The continuation in a different direction, most often at a right angle, of a building, face of a building, or any member, as a molding or mold; -- applied to the shorter in contradistinction to the longer; thus, a facade of sixty feet east and west has a return of twenty feet north and south.