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tate or quality or being curious; nicety; accuracy; exactness; elaboration. [Obs.] Bacon. When thou wast in thy gilt and thy perfume, they mocked thee for too much curiosity. Shak. A screen accurately cut in tapiary work . . . with great curiosity. Evelin.

The act or state of that which curls; as, the curling of smoke when it rises; the curling of a ringlet; also, the act or process of one who curls something, as hair, or the brim of hats.

ich resembles a stream in motion; as, a current of electricity. Two such silver currents, when they join, Do glorify the banks that bound them in. Shak. The surface of the ocean is furrowed by currents, whose direction . . . the navigator should know. Nichol.

Easiness of pronunciation; fluency. [Obs.] When currentness [combineth] with staidness, how can the language . . . sound other than most full of sweetness Camden.

To inclose as with curtains; to furnish with curtains. So when the sun in bed Curtained with cloudy red. Milton.

r perculiarities of a curve from its equation. -- Plane curve (Geom.), a curve such that when a plane passes through three points of the curve, it passes through all the other points of the curve. Any other curve is called a curve of double curvature, or a twisted curve.

A particular leap of a horse, when he raises both his fore legs at once, equally advanced, and, as his fore legs are falling, raises his hind legs, so that all his legs are in the air at once.

t, a recitation. etc. [Colloq.] An English tradesman is always solicitous to cut the shop whenever he can do so with impunity. Thomas Hamilton. To cut a caper. See under Caper. -- To cut the cards, to divide a pack of cards into portions, in order to determine the deal or the trump, or to change the cards to be dealt.…

One who cuts purses for the sake of stealing them or their contents (an act common when men wore purses fastened by a string to their girdles); one who steals from the person; a pickpocket To have an open ear, a quick eye, and a nimble hand, is necessary for a cutpurse. Shak.

xalate, mercuric cyanide, etc. It is obtained in combination, forming an alkaline cyanide when nitrogen or a nitrogenous compound is strongly ignited with carbon and soda or potash. It conducts itself like a member of the halogen group of elements, and shows a tendency to form complex compounds. The name is also applie…

ounded corms, and pretty nodding flowers with the petals so reflexed as to point upwards, whence it is called rabbit's ears. It is also called sow bread, because hogs are said to eat the corms.

A curve generated by a point in the plane of a circle when the circle is rolled along a straight line, keeping always in the same plane.

up by leading strings or by the hand, as a child while he toddles. [Obs.] Little children when they learn to go By painful mothers daded to and fro. Drayton.

In interior decoration, the lower part of the wall of an apartment when adorned with moldings, or otherwise specially decorated.

A mark of reference in the form of a dagger [|]. It is the second in order when more than one reference occurs on a page; -- called also obelisk. Dagger moth (Zoöl.), any moth of the genus Apatalea. The larvæ are often destructive to the foliage of fruit trees, etc. -- Dagger of lath, the wooden weapon given to the Vi…

elded together; used for making gun barrels, etc., of high quality, in which the surface, when polished and acted upon by acid, has a damasc appearance. -- Damascus steel. See Damask steel, under Damask, a.

onsisting chiefly of light carbureted hydrogen; -- so called from its tendence to explode when mixed with atmospheric air and brought into contact with flame.

k; to skip about. Then, 'tis time to dance off. Thackeray. More dances my rapt heart Than when I first my wedded mistress saw. Shak. Shadows in the glassy waters dance. Byron. Where rivulets dance their wayward round. Wordsworth. To dance on a rope, or To dance on nothing, to be hanged.

One who dances or who practices dancing. The merry dancers, beams of the northern lights when they rise and fall alternately without any considerable change of length. See Aurora borealis, under Aurora.

artial overspreading; as, wine with a dash of water; red with a dash of purple. Innocence when it has in it a dash of folly. Addison.