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Webster’s Dictionary (1828)



96 words match “WHIR”

GYRATORY a.
Moving in a circle, or spirally; revolving; whirling around.
HURL v.
To send whirling or whizzing through the air; to throw with violence; to drive with great force; as, to hurl a stone or lance. And hurl'd them headlong to their fleet and main. Pope.
HURLBAT n.
See Whirlbat. [Obs.] Holland.
HURLBONE n.
See Whirlbone.
HURLWIND n.
A whirlwind. [Obs.] Sandys.
HURRICANE n.
valent in the East and West Indies. Also used figuratively. Like the smoke in a hurricane whirl'd. Tennyson. Each guilty thought to me is A dreadful hurricane. Massinger. Hurricane bird (Zoöl.), the frigate bird. -- Hurricane deck. (Naut.) See under Deck.
HURTLE v. 2 definitions
To move rapidly; to wheel or rush suddenly or with violence; to whirl round rapidly; to skirmish. Now hurtling round, advantage for to take. Spenser. Down the hurtling cataract of the ages. R. L. Stevenson.
IMMERSE v.
especially into a fluid; to dip; to sink; to bury; to immerge. Deep immersed beneath its whirling wave. J Warton. More than a mile immersed within the wood. Dryden.
MAELSTROM n.
A celebrated whirlpool on the coast of Norway.
OBFUSCATE v.
e, to confuse; to bewilder. His head, like a smokejack, the funnel unswept, and the ideas whirling round and round about in it, all obfuscated and darkened over with fuliginous matter. Sterne. Clouds of passion which might obfuscate the intellects of meaner females. Sir. W. Scott.
PIROUETTE n. 3 definitions
A whirling or turning on the toes in dancing.
POTHOLE n.
rcular hole formed in the rocky beds of rivers by the grinding action of stones or gravel whirled round by the water in what was at first a natural depression of the rock.
POTTER n.
ving disk on which the clay is molded into form with the hands or tools. "My thoughts are whirled like a potter's wheel." Shak. Potter wasp (Zoöl.), a small solitary wasp (Eumenes fraternal) which constructs a globular nest of mud and sand in which it deposits insect larvæ, such as cankerworms, as food for its young.…
RAP v.
To snatch away; to seize and hurry off. And through the Greeks and Ilians they rapt The whirring chariot. Chapman. From Oxford I was rapt by my nephew, Sir Edmund Bacon, to Redgrove. Sir H. Wotton.
RAPT a.
Snatched away; hurried away or along. Waters rapt with whirling away. Spenser.
REEL v.
To have a whirling sensation; to be giddy. In these lengthened vigils his brain often reeled. Hawthorne.
RIDE v.
ride a horse; to ride a bicycle. [They] rend up both rocks and hills, and ride the air In whirlwind. Milton.
ROUND a.
-- Round clam (Zoöl.), the quahog. -- Round dance one which is danced by couples with a whirling or revolving motion, as the waltz, polka, etc. -- Round game, a game, as of cards, in which each plays on his own account. -- Round hand, a style of penmanship in which the letters are formed in nearly an upright positi…
SCYLLA n.
A dangerous rock on the Italian coast opposite the whirpool Charybdis on the coast of Sicily, -- both personified in classical literature as ravenous monsters. The passage between them was formerly considered perilous; hence, the saying "Between Scylla and Charybdis," signifying a great peril on either hand.…
SEETHE v.
on; to be hot; to boil. 1 Sam. ii. 13. A long Pointe, round which the Mississippi used to whirl, and seethe, and foam. G. W. Cable.
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