Search the Dictionary

le, flat at the bottom, used for grinding pigments or drugs, etc., upon a slab of similar material.

A fibrous material obtained by deviling rags or the remnants of woolen goods.

Whatever materials are used in war for drfense or for annoying an enemy; ammunition; also, stores and provisions; military stores of all kinds. The bodies of men, munition, and money, may justly be called the sinews of war. Sir W. Raleigh.

Made of the stone or material called by the Romans murrha; -- applied to certain costly vases of great beauty and delicacy used by the luxurious in Rome as wine cups; as, murrhine vases, cups, vessels. Murrhine glass, glassware made in imitation of murrhine vases and cups.

A little utensil made of brass, ivory, or other material, so formed that it can be fixed in an erect position on the bridge of a violin, or similar instrument, in order to deaden or soften the tone.

To destroy or remove a material part of, so as to render imperfect; as, to mutilate the orations of Cicero. Among the mutilated poets of antiquity, there is none whose fragments are so beautiful as those of Sappho. Addison. Mutilated gear, Mutilated wheel (Mach.), a gear wheel from a portion of whose periphery the cogs…

The essential material of muscle fibers.

, pointed piece of metal, usually with a head, used for fastening pieces of wood or other material together, by being driven into or through them.

several volatile inflammable liquids obtained by the distillation of certain carbonaceous materials and resembling the naphtha from petroleum; as, Boghead naphtha, from Boghead coal (obtained at Boghead, Scotland); crude naphtha, or light oil, from coal tar; wood naphtha, from wood, etc.

rbon, C10H8, analogous to benzene, and obtained by the distillation of certain bituminous materials, such as the heavy oil of coal tar. It is the type and basis of a large number of derivatives among organic compounds. Formerly called also naphthaline. Naphthalene red (Chem.), a dyestuff obtained from certain diazo der…

A set of rods, made of bone or other material, each divided into nine spaces, and containing the numbers of a column of the multiplication table; -- a contrivance of Baron Napier, the inventor of logarithms, for facilitating the operations of multiplication and division.

pattern. See Linen scroll, under Linen. -- Napkin ring, a ring of metal, ivory, or other material, used to inclose a table napkin.

The negation of freedom in voluntary action; the subjection of all phenomena, whether material or spiritual, to inevitable causation; necessitarianism. Of necessity, by necessary consequence; by compulsion, or irresistible power; perforce.

Of or pertaining to a picture upon glass or other material, in which the lights and shades of the original, and the relations of right and left, are reversed.

Growth or development of new material; neoplasty.

ss or point about which matter is gathered, or to which accretion is made; the central or material portion; -- used both literally and figuratively. It must contain within itself a nucleus of truth. I. Taylor.

The material obtained by untwisting and picking into loose fiber old hemp ropes; -- used for calking the seams of ships, stopping leaks, etc.

r that about which the knowing subject is conversant; what the schoolmen have styled the "materia circa quam." Sir. W. Hamilton. The object of their bitterest hatred. Macaulay.

Denoting the material of which anything is composed, or that which it contains; as, a throne of gold; a sword of steel; a wreath of mist; a cup of water.

Of material things, like the books in a library.