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An unshaped piece or mass of wood or other substance.

A cabin on the after part of the quarterdeck, usually occupied by the captain. [Written also couch.] [Obs.] The commanders came on board and the council sat in the coach. Pepys.

A metallic bushing or strengthening piece in the center of a wooden block sheve.

To burn to charcoal; to char. [R.] Charcoal of roots, coaled into great pieces. Bacon.

Raised pieces of wood of iron around a hatchway, skylight, or other opening in the deck, to prevent water from running bellow; esp. the fore-and-aft pieces of a hatchway frame as distinguished from the transverse head ledges. [Written also combings.]

a defensive garment of chain mail. See Chain mail, under Chain. -- Mast coat (Naut.), a piece of canvas nailed around a mast, where it passes through the deck, to prevent water from getting below. -- Sail coat (Naut.), a canvas cover laced over furled sails, and the like, to keep them dry and clean.…

A lump or piece of anything, usually of a somewhat large size, as of coal, or stone.

The European spotted flycatcher. Cobweb lawn, a fine linen, mentioned in 1640 as being in pieces of fifteen yards. Beck. Draper's Dict. Such a proud piece of cobweb lawn. Beau. & Fl. Cobweb micrometer, a micrometer in which threads of cobwed are substituted for wires.

The bridge piece which affords a bearing for the pivot of a balance in a clock or watch. Knight. Ball cock. See under Ball. -- Chaparral cock. See under Chaparral. -- Cock and bull story, an extravagant, boastful story; a canard. -- Cock of the plains (Zoöl.) See Sage cock. -- Cock of the rock (Zoöl.), a South Amer…

To parboil, or soften by boiling. It [the guava fruit] may be coddled. Dampier.

to expose the bottom (of a river, etc.) and permit the laying of foundations, building of piers, etc.

A casing or crust, or a mold, of pastry, as for a pie. Of the paste a coffin I will rear. Shak.

Fustian tragedies . . . have, by concerted applauses, been cogged upon the town for masterpieces. J. Dennis To cog a die, to load so as to direct its fall; to cheat in playing dice. Swift.

Any device in which an imperfectly conducting contact between pieces of metal or other conductors loosely resting against each other is materially improved in conductivity by the influence of Hertzian waves; -- so called by Sir O. J. Lodge in 1894 on the assumption that the impact of the electic waves caused the loosel…

A piece of metal on which certain characters are stamped by government authority, making it legally current as money; -- much used in a collective sense. It is alleged that it [a subsidy] exceeded all the current coin of the realm. Hallam.

zontal timbering, around the mouth of a shaft. Raymond. Collar beam (Arch.), a horizontal piece of timber connecting and tying together two opposite rafters; -- also, called simply collar. -- Collar of brawn, the quantity of brawn bound up in one parcel. [Eng.] Johnson. -- Collar day, a day of great ceremony at the E…

occasion, or condition, and forming part of a liturgy. The noble poem on the massacres of Piedmont is strictly a collect in verse. Macaulay.

To tie or bind together. The pieces of isinglass are colligated in rows. Nicholson.

A small slice of meat; a piece of flesh. God knows thou art a collop of my flesh. Shak. Sweetbread and collops were with skewers pricked. Dryden.

The thumbpiece of the hammer of a gunlock, by which it may be cocked.