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To hum or sing in a low tone; to murmur softly. Here an old grandmother was crooning over a sick child, and rocking it to and fro. Dickens.

Any preternatural labor, in whiche the boly of the child lies across the pelvis of the mother, so that the shoulder, arm, or trunk is the part first presented at the mouth of the uterus.

See Harmotome, and Staurotide.

ng a knuckle pin; as the solid crosspiece running between parallel slides, which receives motion from the piston of a steam engine and imparts it to the connecting rod, which is hinged to the crosshead.

An ill-natured person. [Colloq.] "Crosspatch, draw the latch." Mother Goose.

l. Byron. One day shall crown the alliance. Shak. To crown the whole, came a proposition. Motley.

the form of a hollow cylinder, with teeth on the end or edge, and operated by a rotative motion.

e after age, . . . treasuring in convents and crypts the few fossils of antique learning. Motley. My knees are bowed in crypt and shrine. Tennyson.

stal; clear; transparent; lucid; pellucid; crystalline. Through crystal walls each little mote will peep. Shak. By crystal streams that murmur through the meads. Dryden. The crystal pellets at the touch congeal, And from the ground rebounds the ratting hail. H. Brooks.

on of the fixed stars and the primum mobile (or outer circle of the heavens, which by its motion was supposed to carry round all those within it), in order to explain certain movements of the heavently bodies. -- Crystalline lens (Anat.), the capsular lenslike body in the eye, serving to focus the rays of light. It co…

ace culminated in the secondary era. Dana. The house of Burgundy was rapidly culminating. Motley.

Rendering action or motion difficult or toilsome; serving to obstruct or hinder; burdensome; clogging. He sunk beneath the cumbrous weight. Swift. That cumbrousand unwieldy style which disfigures English composition so extensively. De Quincey.

gulate or thicken; to cause to congeal; to curdle. Does it curd thy blood To say I am thy mother Shak.

at bores into the pith and kills currant bushes; specif., the larvae of a small clearwing moth (Ægeria tipuliformis) and a longicorn beetle (Psenocerus supernotatus). -- Currant worm (Zoöl.), an insect larva which eats the leaves or fruit of the currant. The most injurious are the currant sawfly (Nematus ventricosus),…

A flowing or passing; onward motion. Hence: A body of fluid moving continuously in a certain direction; a stream; esp., the swiftest part of it; as, a current of water or of air; that which resembles a stream in motion; as, a current of electricity. Two such silver currents, when they join, Do glorify the banks that bo…

A stroke or blow or cutting motion with an edged instrument; a stroke or blow with a whip.

common cutworms are the larvæ of various species of Agrotis and related genera of noctuid moths.

rface of the third degree, described by a moving straight line; -- used to illustrate the motions of a rigid body and also the forces acting on the body.

An instrument for exhibiting and measuring wave motion; specif. (Elec.),

and, as a child while he toddles. [Obs.] Little children when they learn to go By painful mothers daded to and fro. Drayton.