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rowing in marshes, with long, glat leaves, and having its flowers in a close cylindrical spike at the top of the stem. The leaves are frequently used for seating chairs, making mats, etc. See Catkin.

A piece of timber or an iron barrel traversed with iron-pointed spikes or spears, five or six feet long, used to defend a passage, stop a breach, or impede the advance of cavalry, etc. Obstructions of chain, boom, and cheval-de-frise. W. Irving.

To spike, as a cannon. [Obs.] Johnson.

A plant (Celosia cristata), of many varieties, cultivated for its broad, fantastic spikes of brilliant flowers; -- sometimes called garden cockscomb. Also the Pedicularis, or lousewort, the Rhinanthus Crista-galli, and the Onobrychis Crista-galli.

ort family, with the leaves all radical, and the small yellow or white flowers in a long spike (Aletris farinosa and A. aurea). Called sometimes star grass, blackroot, blazing star, and unicorn root.

A genus of grasses bearing spikes of flowers resembling the cornucopia in form.

e. " The port . . . crooketh like a bow." Phaer. Their shoes and pattens are snouted, and piked more than a finger long, crooking upwards. Camden.

A light lance; a short spear; a half pike; also, a demilancer.

The American wall-eyed perch; -- called also doré. See Pike perch.

The spike or head of any cereal (as, wheat, rye, barley, Indian corn, etc.), containing the kernels. First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear. Mark iv. 28.

nct Cretaceous fishes; -- so named from their spear-shaped teeth. They were allied to the pike (Esox).

A genus of fresh-water fishes, including pike and pickerel.

A group which includes the bony ganoids, as the gar pikes.

hands, to pass, often suddenly or unexpectedly, into one's ownership or control; as, to spike cannon when they are likely to fall into the hands of the enemy. -- To fall in with. (a) To meet with accidentally; as, to fall in with a friend. (b) (Naut.) To meet, as a ship; also, to discover or come near, as land. (c) T…

- Finger alphabet. See Dactylology. -- Finger bar, the horizontal bar, carrying slotted spikes, or fingers, through which the vibratory knives of mowing and reaping machines play. -- Finger board (Mus.), the part of a stringed instrument against which the fingers press the strings to vary the tone; the keyboard of a…

ilitary weapon, like the common flail, often having the striking part armed with rows of spikes, or loaded. Fairholt. No citizen thought himself safe unless he carried under his coat a small flail, loaded with lead, to brain the Popish assassins. Macaulay.

hich has not been folded. -- Flat rail, a railroad rail consisting of a simple flat bar spiked to a longitudinal sleeper. -- Flat rods (Mining), horizontal or inclined connecting rods, for transmitting motion to pump rods at a distance. Raymond. -- Flat rope, a rope made by plaiting instead of twisting; gasket; senn…

he texture or nature of, a leaf; having leaves intermixed with flowers; as, a foliaceous spike.

rbs of the Old World, with finely dissected leaves and small flowers in dense racemes or spikes. F. officinalis is a common species, and was formerly used as an antiscorbutic. Climbing fumitory (Bot.), the Alleghany vine (Adlumia cirrhosa); a biennial climbing plant with elegant feathery leaves and large clusters of pr…

A spike on a gauntlet; a gadling. Fairholt.