Search the Dictionary

To cut by striking violently and at random; to cut in long slits.

To slap; to strike; to beat; to throw down violently. [Prov. Eng. & Colloq. U.S.] How did you kill him Slat[t]ed his brains out. Marston.

The violent shaking or flapping of anything hanging loose in the wind, as of a sail, when being hauled down.

The extensive, violent, bloody, or wanton destruction of life; carnage. On war and mutual slaughter bent. Milton.

To put to death with a weapon, or by violence; hence, to kill; to put an end to; to destroy. With this sword then will I slay you both. Chaucer. I will slay the last of them with the sword. Amos ix. 1. I'll slay more gazers than the basilisk. Shak.

To shut with violence; to slam; as, to slot a door. [Obs. or Prov. Eng.]

To break in pieces by violence; to dash to pieces; to crush. Here everything is broken and smashed to pieces. Burke.

grove. Milton. That which, above all others, yields the sweetest smell in the air, is the violent. Bacon.

To emit air, chiefly through the nose, audibly and violently, by a kind of involuntary convulsive force, occasioned by irritation of the inner membrane of the nose. Not to be sneezed at, not to be despised or contemned; not to be treated lightly. [Colloq.] "He had to do with old women who were not to be sneezed at." Pr…

The act of violently forcing air out through the nasal passages while the cavity of the mouth is shut off from the pharynx by the approximation of the soft palate and the base of the tongue.

To force the air with violence through the nose, so as to make a noise, as do high-spirited horsed in prancing and play. Fairfax.

To inhale air through the nose with violence or with noise, as do dogs and horses. Dryden.

is isolated as a soft, waxy, white, unstable metal, so readily oxidized that it combines violently with water, and to be preserved must be kept under petroleum or some similar liquid. Sodium is used combined in many salts, in the free state as a reducer, and as a means of obtaining other metals (as magnesium and alumi…

ive to the sight; not glaring; pleasing to the eye; not exciting by intensity of color or violent contrast; as, soft hues or tints. The sun, shining upon the upper part of the clouds . . . made the softest lights imaginable. Sir T. Browne.

To make less harsh, less rude, less offensive, or less violent, or to render of an opposite quality. He bore his great commision in his look, But tempered awe, and softened all he spoke. Dryden.

Greatly; violently; deeply. [Hannah] prayed unto the Lord and wept sore. 1 Sam. i. 10. Sore sighed the knight, who this long sermon heard. Dryden.

With a sudden swoop; violently. Young.

A sudden, violent, and temporary effort or emotion; as, a spasm of repentance. Cynic spasm (Med.) See under Cynic. -- Spasm of the chest. See Angina pectoris, under Angina.

y the imagination; an image. [R.] "The species of the letters illuminated with indigo and violet." Sir I. Newton. Wit, . . . the faculty of imagination in the writer, which searches over all the memory for the species or ideas of those things which it designs to represent. Dryden.

These, in the usual photogrophic methods, have their maximum influence at and beyond the violet rays, but are not limited to this region. -- Chromatic spectrum, the visible colored rays of the solar spectrum, exhibiting the seven principal colors in their order, and covering the central and larger portion of the spac…