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A slender rod or wire used in knitting; a knitting needle; also, a hooked instrument which carries the thread or twine, and by means of which knots or loops are formed in the process of netting, knitting, or crocheting.

of eyes, antennæ, four pairs of tentacles, and a protrusile pharynx, armed with a pair of hooked jaws.

Hooked or crooked in an extreme degree. Maunder.

boring waters, noted for its vigor and activity, and habit of leaping from the water when hooked.

A rope or strap to which a purchase is hooked.

To keep in play, as a hooked fish, in order to land it. To play off, to display; to show; to put in exercise; as, to play off tricks. -- To play one's cards, to manage one's means or opportunities; to contrive. -- Played out, tired out; exhausted; at the end of one's resources. [Colloq.]

A tool, hooked at the end, for enlarging or clearing seams for the reception of oakum.

A plane with a hooked tool protruding far below the sole, for smoothing the bottom of a cavity.

t now naturalized in the West Indies and some other tropical countries. It has a powerful hooked beak, a crest of long feathers, and a long tail. It feeds upon reptiles of various kinds, and is much prized on account of its habit of killing and devouring snakes of all kinds. Called also serpent eater.…

Any one of numerous species of oscinine birds of the family Laniidæ, having a strong hooked bill, toothed at the tip. Most shrikes are insectivorous, but the common European gray shrike (Lanius excubitor), the great northern shrike (L. borealis), and several others, kill mice, small birds, etc., and often impale them o…

A rope having its ends made fast so that a purchase can be hooked to the bight; also, a rope made fast in the center so that both ends can be used.

r support or defense by a person walking; hence, a support; that which props or upholds. "Hooked staves." Piers Plowman. The boy was the very staff of my age. Shak. He spoke of it [beer] in "The Earnest Cry," and likewise in the "Scotch Drink," as one of the staffs of life which had been struck from the poor man's hand…

- Stopper bolt (Naut.), a large ringbolt in a ship's deck, to which the deck stoppers are hooked.

Somewhat hooked or curved.

of which one species (D. fullonum) bears a large flower head covered with stiff, prickly, hooked bracts. This flower head, when dried, is used for raising a nap on woolen cloth.

n and square. Tenter ground, a place where tenters are erected. -- Tenter-hook, a sharp, hooked nail used for fastening cloth on a tenter. -- To be on the tenters, or on the tenter-hooks, to be on the stretch; to be in distress, uneasiness, or suspense. Hudibras.

nous genus Desmodium, which have trifoliate leaves, and joined pods roughened with minute hooked hairs by which the joints adhere to clothing and to the fleece of sheep.

emblance, in several characteristics, to the extinct dodo. Its beak is stout and strongly hooked, and the mandible has two or three strong teeth toward the end. or ts color is chocolate red. Called also toothbilled pigeon, and manu-mea.

Having the shape of a hook; being of a curved or hooked from; hooklike. Unciform bone (Anat.), a bone of the carpus at the bases of the fourth and fifth metacarpals; the hamatum.

Hooked; bent at the tip in the form of a hook; as, an uncinate process.