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To gather with the hand, or by drawing toward one; to pluck; as, to pull fruit; to pull flax; to pull a finch.

That purges; cleansing. Purging flax (Bot.), an annual European plant of the genus Linum (L. catharticum); dwarf wild flax; -- so called from its use as a cathartic medicine.

owered weed; -- so named from a Mr. Ramsted who introduced it into Pennsylvania. See Toad flax. Called also Ramsted weed.

To prepare for use, as flax, by separating the fibers from the woody part by process of soaking, macerating, and other treatment. Ure.

A place or establishment where flax is retted. See Ret. Ure.

The act or process of preparing flax for use by soaking, meceration, and kindred processes; -- also called rotting. See Ret. Ure.

implement, with teeth like those of a comb, for removing the seeds and seed vessels from flax, broom corn, etc.

A distaff used in spinning; the staff or frame about which flax is arranged, and from which the thread is drawn in spinning. Chapman. Sad Clotho held the rocke, the whiles the thread By grisly Lachesis was spun with pain, That cruel Atropos eftsoon undid. Spenser.

To expose, as flax, to a process of maceration, etc., for the purpose of separating the fiber; to ret.

) See under Giant. -- Salamander's hair or wool (Min.), a species of asbestus or mineral flax. [Obs.] Bacon.

To separate the woody fiber from (flax, hemp, etc.) by beating; to swingle.

An implement or machine for scutching hemp, flax, or cotton; etc.; a scutch; a scutching machine.

n of water down the bore hole. It consists of a bag encircling the tubing and filled with flax seed, which swells when wet and fills the space between the tubing and the sides of the hole. -- Seed bud (Bot.), the germ or rudiment of the plant in the embryo state; the ovule. -- Seed coat (Bot.), the covering of a seed…

A thin piece or fragment; specifically, one of the scales or pieces of the woody part of flax removed by the operation of breaking.

laginous, and some have tough ligneous fibers which are used as a substitute for hemp and flax. Balfour (Cyc. of India).

To blast; to destroy the life or vigor of, as by a stroke or by some visitation. The flax and the barely was smitten. Ex. ix. 31.

A kind of spar; earth flax, or amianthus. [Obs.] oodward.

ut, and twist into threads, either by the hand or machinery; as, to spin wool, cotton, or flax; to spin goat's hair; to produce by drawing out and twisting a fibrous material. All the yarn she [Penelope] spun in Ulysses' absence did but fill Ithaca full of moths. Shak.

A machine for combining and drawing fibers of flax to form a sliver preparatory to spinning.

Any plant of the genus Euphobia. See Euphorbia. Spurge flax, an evergreen shrub (Daphne Gnidium) with crowded narrow leaves. It is native of Southern Europe. -- Spurge laurel, a European shrub (Daphne Laureola) with oblong evergreen leaves. -- Spurge nettle. See under Nettle. -- Spurge olive, an evergreen shrub (Dap…