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Confused; Babel-like.

Pulpy throughout, like a berry; -- said of fruits. Gray.

, (Bot.) A plant with flowers shaped like buttons; especially, several species of Ranunculus, and the cornflower (Centaures cyanus) and globe amaranth (Gomphrena).

Shaped like a rod or staff.

said of a dog. [Eng.] To back and fill, to manage the sails of a ship so that the wind strikes them alternately in front and behind, in order to keep the ship in the middle of a river or channel while the current or tide carries the vessel against the wind. Hence: (Fig.) To take opposite positions alternately; to asser…

Anything like , or serving the purpose of, a backbone. The lofty mountains on the north side compose the granitic axis, or backbone of the country. Darwin. We have now come to the backbone of our subject. Earle.

In rounders, the player who stands immediately behind the striking base.

pic vegetable organism, belonging to the class Algæ, usually in the form of a jointed rodlike filament, and found in putrefying organic infusions. Bacteria are destitute of chlorophyll, and are the smallest of microscopic organisms. They are very widely diffused in nature, and multiply with marvelous rapidity, both by…

A cephalopod of the extinct genus Baculites, found fossil in the Cretaceous rocks. It is like an uncoiled ammonite.

To swell or hang down like a full bag; as, the skin bags from containing morbid matter.

Resembling a bag; loose or puffed out, or pendent, like a bag; flabby; as, baggy trousers; baggy cheeks.

To make to look like a bagpipe. To bagpipe the mizzen (Naut.), to lay it aback by bringing the sheet to the mizzen rigging. Totten.

A small molding, like the astragal, but smaller; a bead.

One of several lepidopterous insects which construct, in the larval state, a baglike case which they carry about for protection. One species (Platoeceticus Gloveri) feeds on the orange tree. See Basket worm.

a total eclipse, the slender, unobscured crescent of the sun's disk appears momentarily like a row of bright spots resembling a string of beads. The phenomenon (first fully described by Francis Baily, 1774 -- 1844) is thought to be an effect of irradiation, and of inequalities of the moon's edge.

atic. -- To lay in balance, to put up as a pledge or security. [Obs.] Chaucer. -- To strike a balance, to find out the difference between the debit and credit sides of an account.

Resembling an acorn; -- applied to a group of barnacles having shells shaped like acorns. See Acornshell, and Barnacle.

tain whales (Balænoidea) are attached side by side along the upper jaw, and form a fringelike sieve by which the food is retained in the mouth.

A badgerlike animal of India (Arcionyx collaris).

Like a fish of the genus Balistes; of the family Balistidæ. See Filefish.