PLANT n.
The whole machinery and apparatus employed in carrying on a trade or mechanical business; also, sometimes including real estate, and whatever represents investment of capital in the means of carrying on a business, but not including material worked upon or finished products; as, the plant of a foundry, a mill, or a rai…
PNEUMATIC; PNEUMATICAL a.
s, etc., are sent, by the flow and pressure of air. -- Pneumatic elevator, a hoisting machine worked by compressed air. -- Pneumatic pile, a tubular pile or cylinder of large diameter sunk by atmospheric pressure. -- Pneumatic pump, an air-exhausting or forcing pump. -- Pneumatic railway. See Atmospheric railway, u…
POINTED a.
Characterized by sharpness, directness, or pithiness of expression; terse; epigrammatic; especially, directed to a particular person or thing. His moral pleases, not his pointed wit. Pope. Pointed arch (Arch.), an arch with a pointed crown. -- Pointed style (Arch.), a name given to that style of architecture in which…
PONTOON n.
A low, flat vessel, resembling a barge, furnished with cranes, capstans, and other machinery, used in careening ships, raising weights, drawing piles, etc., chiefly in the Mediterranean; a lighter. Pontoon bridge, a bridge formed with pontoons. -- Pontoon train, the carriages of the pontoons, and the materials they ca…
POOR a.
Wanting in fat, plumpness, or fleshiness; lean; emaciated; meager; as, a poor horse, ox, dog, etc. "Seven other kine came up after them, poor and very ill-favored and lean-fleshed." Gen. xli. 19.
PORT n.
A passageway in a machine, through which a fluid, as steam, water, etc., may pass, as from a valve to the interior of the cylinder of a steam engine; an opening in a valve seat, or valve face. Air port, Bridle port, etc. See under Air, Bridle, etc. -- Port bar (Naut.), a bar to secure the ports of a ship in a gale. -…