Search the Dictionary

To strain or move out of a straight line; to crook by straining; to make crooked; to curve; to make ready for use by drawing into a curve; as, to bend a bow; to bend the knee.

Changed by pressure so as to be no longer straight; crooked; as, a bent pin; a bent lever.

Hence: Morally distorted; not upright. [Poetic] I may be straight, though they themselves be bevel. Shak. A bevel angle, any angle other than one of 90º. -- Bevel wheel, a cogwheel whose working face is oblique to the axis. Knight.

ball used in the game of bowls, or a tendency imparted to the ball, which turns it from a straight line. Being ignorant that there is a concealed bias within the spheroid, which will . . . swerve away. Sir W. Scott.

ddle or slightly beyond the middle; opening with a cleft; divided by a linear sinus, with straight margins.

One who, or that which, bisects; esp. (Geom.) a straight line which bisects an angle.

A surgical instrument consisting of a slender knife, either straight or curved, generally used by introducing it beneath the part to be divided, and cutting towards the surface.

Built with the stem nearly straight up and down.

Built with the stem nearly straight up and down.

In the manner of a bolt; suddenly; straight; unbendingly. [He] came bolt up against the heavy dragoon. Thackeray. Bolt upright. (a) Perfectly upright; perpendicular; straight up; unbendingly erect. Addison. (b) On the back at full length. [Obs.] Chaucer.

A long, straightnecked, glass vessel for chemical distillations; -- called also a matrass or receiver.

as in carpentry, masonry, and surveying. Knight. Joiners, etc., bone their work with two straight edges. W. M. Buchanan.

A method of leveling a line or surface by sighting along the tops of two or more straight edges, or a range of properly spaced poles. See 3d Bone, v. t.

To cause to deviate from straightness; to bend; to inflect; to make crooked or curved. We bow things the contrary way, to make them come to their natural straightness. Milton. The whole nation bowed their necks to the worst kind of tyranny. Prescott.

. Like an uninstructed bowler, . . . who thinks to attain the jack by delivering his bowl straightforward upon it. Sir W. Scott.

A straight awl with chisel edge, used to make holes for brads, etc. Weale.

A large four-wheeled carriage, having a straight body and calash top, with the driver's seat in front and the footman's behind.

A straight tool with file teeth, made of steel, to be pressed through irregular holes in metal that cannot be dressed by revolving tools; a drift.

by broken ground. (b) Ground recently opened with the plow. -- Broken line (Geom.), the straight lines which join a number of given points taken in some specified order. -- Broken meat, fragments of meat or other food. -- Broken number, a fraction. -- Broken weather, unsettled weather.

together; esp., the Cytisus scoparius of Western Europe, which is a low shrub with long, straight, green, angular branches, mintue leaves, and large yellow flowers. No gypsy cowered o'er fires of furze and broom. Wordsworth.