Search the Dictionary

A female who has the same parents with another person, or who has one of them only. In the latter case, she is more definitely called a half sister. The correlative of brother. I am the sister of one Claudio. Shak.

The apparent arch, or vault, of heaven, which in a clear day is of a blue color; the heavens; the firmament; -- sometimes in the plural. The Norweyan banners flout the sky. Shak.

r (Min.), a variety of calcite of silvery white luster and of a slaty structure. -- Transparent slate, a plate of translucent material, as ground glass, upon which a copy of a picture, placed beneath it, can be made by tracing.

stband. -- To laugh in the sleeve, to laugh privately or unperceived, especially while apparently preserving a grave or serious demeanor toward the person or persons laughed at; that is, perhaps, originally, by hiding the face in the wide sleeves of former times. -- To pin, or hang, on the sleeve of, to be, or make,…

icate of alumina, of a greenish color, which, in certain states of humidity, appears transparent and almost gelatinous.

hence, to break off; to snatch away. Curbed and snipped in my younger years by fear of my parents from those vicious excrescences to which that age was subject. Fuller. The captain seldom ordered anything out of the ship's stores . . . but I snipped some of it for my own share. De Foe.

Watery particles congealed into white or transparent crystals or flakes in the air, and falling to the earth, exhibiting a great variety of very beautiful and perfect forms.

The act of soaring; upward flight. This apparent soar of the hooded falcon. Coleridge.

, latter the winter solstice, in northern latitudes; - - so called because the sun then apparently stands still in its northward or southward motion.

A male child; the male issue, or offspring, of a parent, father or mother. Sarah conceived, and bare Abraham a son. Gen. xxi. 2.

The husband of one's daughter; a man in his relationship to his wife's parents. To take me as for thy son in lawe. Chaucer.

herd with metals in the earth, and minerals with minerals. Woodward. The illiberality of parents towards children makes them base, and sort with any company. Bacon.

A specific remedy. See Specific, a., 3. His parents were weak enough to believe that the royal touch was a specific for this malady. Macaulay.

Apparently right; superficially fair, just, or correct, but not so in reality; appearing well at first view; plausible; as, specious reasoning; a specious argument. Misled for a moment by the specious names of religion, liberty, and property. Macaulay. In consequence of their greater command of specious expression. J.…

The apparent surface of the heavens, which is assumed to be spherical and everywhere equally distant, in which the heavenly bodies appear to have their places, and on which the various astronomical circles, as of right ascension and declination, the equator, ecliptic, etc., are conceived to be drawn; an ideal geometric…

eb, a cocoon, silk, or the like) from threads produced by the extrusion of a viscid, transparent liquid, which hardens on coming into contact with the air; -- said of the spider, the silkworm, etc.

number of pieces, or spores, each of which eventually develops into an organism like the parent form. Balfour.

To issue or proceed, as from a parent or ancestor; to result, as from a cause, motive, reason, or principle. [They found] new hope to spring Out of despair, joy, but with fear yet linked. Milton.

Similar and probably related motion of the stars of an asterism, as distinguished from apparent change of place due to solar motion.-- ## = star streaming --

One who, or that which, is stationary, as a planet when apparently it has neither progressive nor retrograde motion. Holland.