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A porch or waiting room, usually at the west end of an abbey church, where the monks collected on returning from processions, where bodies were laid previous to interment, and where women were allowed to see the monks to whom they were related, or to hear divine service. Also, frequently applied to the porch of a churc…

To prate; to jabber; to babble. [Obs.] Here many, clepid filosophirs, glavern diversely. Wyclif.

Distorted; crabbed.

Fierceness of look; sternness; crabbedness; forbiddingness.

Unpleasant and repulsive to the sensibilities; austere; crabbed; morose; abusive; abusive; severe; rough. Clarence is so harsh, so blunt. Shak. Though harsh the precept, yet the charmed. Dryden.

The quality or state of being harsh. O, she is Ten times more gentle than her father 's crabbed, And he's composed of harshness. Shak. 'Tis not enough no harshness gives offense, The sound must seem an echo to the sense. Pope.

A cell annexed to an abbey, for the use of a hermit. Howell.

and say, "Amen." Shak. Hooding end (Shipbuilding), the end of a hood where it enters the rabbet in the stem post or stern post.

Of habitual bad temper; peevish; fractious; cross; crabbed; surly; as, an ill-natured person.

Of bad temper; morose; crabbed; sour; peevish; fretful; quarrelsome.

A telltale; a prater; a blabber. [Obs.] "I am no lab." Chaucer.

building), the outline of a section which is horizontal crosswise, and parallel with the rabbet of the keel lengthwise. Level surface (Physics), an equipotential surface at right angles at every point to the lines of force.

chedly; meanly. They were miserably entertained. Sir P. Sidney. The fifth was miserably stabbed to death. South.

The female superior or head of a religious house, as an abbess, etc.

sually of the form of a shepherd's crook, borne as an official emblem by a bishop, abbot, abbess, or other prelate privileged to carry it. See Crook, and Crosier. -- Pastoral Theology, that part of theology which treats of the duties of pastors.

Little; petty; pitiful. [Obs.] Crabbe.

An angle in the south transept of Westminster Abbey, London; -- so called because it contains the tombs of Chaucer, Spenser, Dryden, Ben Jonson, Gray, Tennyson, Browning, and other English poets, and memorials to many buried elsewhere.

door or gate. He by a privy postern took his flight. Spenser. Out at the postern, by the abbey wall. Shak.

actual use or exercise of any art or profession, particularly that of law or medicine. Crabbe.

A lady superior of a priory of nuns, and next in dignity to an abbess.