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The art or operation of carving figures or inscriptions on rock or stone.

A mental image or representation of a real object; a fancy; a notion. Cudworth. Figures or little features, of which the description had produced in you no phantasm or expectation. Jer. Taylor.

An optical effect produced by a magic lantern. The figures are painted in transparent colors, and all the rest of the glass is opaque black. The screen is between the spectators and the instrument, and the figures are often made to appear as in motion, or to merge into one another.

A revolving disk on which figures drawn in different relative attitudes are seen successively, so as to produce the appearance of an object in actual motion, as an animal leaping, etc., in consequence of the persistence of the successive visual impressions of the retina. It is often arranged so that the figures may be…

An instrument for producing luminous figures by the vibrations of sounding bodies.

simultaneously taken from different points of view on the same level, rough models of the figure or bust of a person or animal may be made with great expedition.

nting, drawing, engraving, photography, etc.; a representation in colors. By extension, a figure; a model. Pictures and shapes are but secondary objects. Bacon. The young king's picture . . . in virgin wax. Howell.

A certain fancy figure in skating.

oney coined in Massachusetts in the seventeenth century, and so called from its bearing a figure of a pine tree. -- Pine weevil (Zoöl.), any one of numerous species of weevils whose larvæ bore in the wood of pine trees. Several species are known in both Europe and America, belonging to the genera Pissodes, Hylobius, e…

One of the conventional figures or "spots" on playing cards, dominoes, etc. Addison.

A cotton fabric, figured in the loom, -- used as a dress goods for women and children, and for vestings, etc.

Not variegated, dyed, or figured; as, plain muslin.

An instrument for measuring the area of any plane figure, however irregular, by passing a tracer around the bounding line; a platometer.

lcined gypsum, or plaster of Paris, especially when ground, as used for making ornaments, figures, moldings, etc.; or calcined gypsum used as a fertilizer. Plaster cast, a copy of an object obtained by pouring plaster of Paris mixed with water into a mold. -- Plaster of Paris. Etym: [So called because originally broug…

One who makes plaster casts. "The plasterer doth make his figures by addition." Sir H. Wotton.

The art of forming figures in any plastic material.

A figure in which a word is separated or repeated by way of emphasis, so as not only to signify the individual thing denoted by it, but also its peculiar attribute or quality; as, "His wife's a wife indeed." Bailey.

ions of a composition, or the pauses to be observed in reading, or to point off groups of figures, etc.; a stop, as a comma, a semicolon, and esp. a period; hence, figuratively, an end, or conclusion. And there a point, for ended is my tale. Chaucer. Commas and points they set exactly right. Pope.

A combining form or prefix from Gr. poly`s, many; as, polygon, a figure of many angles; polyatomic, having many atoms; polychord, polyconic.

A plane figure having many angles, and consequently many sides; esp., one whose perimeter consists of more than four sides; any figure having many angles. Polygon of forces (Mech.), a polygonal figure, the sides of which, taken successively, represent, in length and direction, several forces acting simultaneously upon…