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Loose hose or breeches; leather leg quards. The word is used loosely and often in a jocose sense.

Loose hose or breeches; galligaskins. [Obs.] Shak.

A conical chamber at the breech of the bore in heavy ordnance, especially in mortars; -- named after the inventor.

d often binds them together with silk. -- Grape of a cannon, the cascabel or knob at the breech. -- Grape sugar. See Glucose. -- Grape worm (Zoöl.), the larva of the grape moth. -- Soar grapes, things which persons affect to despise because they can not possess them; -- in allusion to

A sort of breeches. [Obs..] Chaucer.

A kind of graduated breech sight for a small arm, or a cannon.

Close-fitting trousers or breeches, as formerly worn, reaching to the knee. These men were bound in their coats, their hosen, and their hats, and their other garments. Dan. iii. 21. His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank. Shak.

A built-up, rifled, rapid-fire gun of oil-tempered steel, having a rectangular breechblock which moves horizontally or vertically in a mortise cut completely through the jacket. It is made in France.

ncrease twist, the twixt of a rifle groove in which the angle of twist increases from the breech to the muzzle.

Breeches; trousers. [Colloq. or Slang] Ld. Lytton.

f the knee, as in respect or courtesy. Give them title, knee, and approbation. Shak. Knee breeches. See under Breeches. -- Knee holly, Knee holm (Bot.), butcher's broom. -- Knee jerk (Physiol.) a jerk or kick produced by a blow or sudden strain upon the patellar tendon of the knee, which causes a sudden contraction o…

The name for a style of short breeches; smallclothes.

. A breech-loading steel cannon manufactured at the works of Friedrich Krupp, at Essen in Prussia. Guns of over eight-inch bore are made up of several concentric cylinders; those of a smaller size are forged solid. Knight.

A projection beneath the breech end of a gun barrel. In the lump, In a lump, the whole together; in gross. They may buy them in the lump. Addison. -- Lump coal, coal in large lumps; -- the largest size brought from the mine. -- Lump sum, a gross sum without a specification of items; as, to award a lump sum in satisfac…

A breech-loading machine gun consisting of a number of barrels fitted together, so arranged that the barrels can be fired simultaneously, or successively, and rapidly.

ed. Mortar bed (Mil.), a framework of wood and iron, suitably hollowed out to receive the breech and trunnions of a mortar. -- Mortar boat or vessel (Naut.), a boat strongly built and adapted to carrying a mortar or mortars for bombarding; a bomb ketch. -- Mortar piece, a mortar. [Obs.] Shak.

receives its charge through the muzzle, as distinguished from one which is loaded at the breech.

See Gorgerin. -- Neck of a cascabel (Gun.), the part joining the knob to the base of the breech. -- Neck of a gun, the small part of the piece between the chase and the swell of the muzzle. -- Neck of a tooth (Anat.), the constriction between the root and the crown. -- Neck or nothing (Fig.), at all risks. -- Neck…

Western Europe; the petty whin (Genista Anglica). -- Needle gun, a firearm loaded at the breech with a cartridge carrying its own fulminate, which is exploded by driving a slender needle, or pin, into it. -- Needle loom (Weaving), a loom in which the weft thread is carried through the shed by a long eye-pointed needl…

to stop (a gun breech) so as to prevent the escape of gas in firing.