Search the Dictionary

An instrument consisting of a short pendulum with a sliding weight. It is set in motion by clockwork, and serves to measure time in music.

Derived from the name of one's mother, or other female ancestor; as, a metronymic name or appellation. -- A metronymic appellation.

The mother city; the chief city of a kingdom, state, or country. [Edinburgh] gray metropolis of the North. Tennyson.

ome cases single organisms shaped like dumb-bells (Diplococcus), all without the power of motion. See Illust. of Ascoccus.

A tribe of Lepidoptera, including a vast number of minute species, as the plume moth, clothes moth, etc.

A measure of electro-motive force; the millionth part of one volt.

A small motile spore furnished with two vibratile cilia, found in certain green algæ.

Yielding milk. "Milky mothers." Roscommon.

A moth or lepidopterous insect; -- so called because the wings appear as if covered with white dust or powder, like a miller's clothes. Called also moth miller.

the larval state, excavate galleries in the parenchyma of leaves. They are mostly minute moths and dipterous flies.

e uplifted the land floats vague in the ether, Ships and the shadows of ships hang in the motionless air. Longfellow.

t; -- usually unfavorable to the thing represented; as, a misrepresentation of a person's motives. Sydney Smith.

The goddess of memory and the mother of the Muses.

near water. Above, it is olive brown, barred with black; beneath, it is brownish yellow, mottled with darker. The upland moccasin is Ancistrodon atrofuscus. They resemble rattlesnakes, but are without rattles. Moccasin flower (Bot.), a species of lady's slipper (Cypripedium acaule) found in North America. The lower pe…

A mother. [Obs.] Chaucer.

mity; as, to bear adversity with moderation. The calm and judicious moderation of Orange. Motley.

A mechamical arrangement for regulating motion in a machine, or producing equality of effect.

ne by the moving power, and that yielded at the working points, either constantly, if its motion be uniform, or in the interval of time which it occupies in passing from any given velocity to the same velocity again, if its motion be variable; -- called also the efficiency of the machine. Mosley. Rankine. -- Modulus o…

Of or pertaining to a mass of matter; -- said of the properties or motions of masses, as distinguished from those of molecules or atoms. Carpenter.

Impulsive power; force; momentum. The moments or quantities of motion in bodies. Berkley. Touch, with lightest moment of impulse, His free will. Milton.