Search the Dictionary

To enter deeply; to fall or retire beneath or below the surface; to penetrate. The stone sunk into his forehead. 1 San. xvii. 49.

A road having partly sunken transverse logs (called skids) at intervals of about five feet.

ater, and rising nearly or quite to the surface, by which boats are sometimes pierced and sunk.

Destitute or deprived of the sun or its rays; shaded; shadowed. The sunken glen whose sunless shrubs must weep. Byron.

tched tightly; strained to stiffness; rigid; not lax; as, a tense fiber. The temples were sunk, her forehead was tense, and a fatal paleness was upon her. Goldsmith. -- Tense"ly, adv. -- Tense"ness, n.

A projecting member resembling a tenon, but fitting into a mortise that is only sunk, not pierced through.

de mouth at one end and narrow at the other. -- Tunnel pit, Tunnel shaft, a pit or shaft sunk from the top of the ground to the level of a tunnel, for drawing up the earth and stones, for ventilation, lighting, and the like.

A pit sunk in some part of a drift.

A perpendicular shaft sunk to cut the lode at any required depth. Weale.

Of or pertaining to the smallpox; having pits, or sunken impressions, like those of the smallpox; variolar; variolic.

Irregular change; revolution; mutation. This man had, after many vicissitudes of fortune, sunk at last into abject and hopeless poverty. Macaulay.

t where the stones are left slightly higher than elsewhere, the rest of the surface being sunken or dished. The raised surface is intended to prevent the settling of water in the joints.

A pit or hole sunk into the earth to such a depth as to reach a supply of water, generally of a cylindrical form, and often walled with stone or bricks to prevent the earth from caving in. The woman said unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. John iv. 11.

A small shaft sunk from one level to another, as for the purpose of ventilation.

uction or injury of a vessel by being cast on shore, or on rocks, or by being disabled or sunk by the force of winds or waves; shipwreck. Hard and obstinate As is a rock amidst the raging floods, 'Gainst which a ship, of succor desolate, Doth suffer wreck, both of herself and goods. Spenser.

One sunk in vice or degradation; a base, despicable person; a vile knave; as, a profligate wretch.

Very miserable; sunk in, or accompanied by, deep affliction or distress, as from want, anxiety, or grief; calamitous; woeful; very afflicting. "To what wretched state reserved!" Milton. O cruel! Death! to those you are more kind Than to the wretched mortals left behind. Waller. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore…