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an explosive containing nitroglycerin, -- used in blasting. -- Neptune's cup (Zoöl.), a very large, cup-shaped, marine sponge (Thalassema Neptuni).

A disease, the chief symptom of which is a very acute pain, exacerbating or intermitting, which follows the course of a nervous branch, extends to its ramifications, and seems therefore to be seated in the nerve. It seems to be independent of any structural lesion. Dunglison.

Indifference in quality; a state neither very good nor bad. [Obs.] Donne.

ific Ocean. New Zealand flax. (a) (Bot.) A tall, liliaceous herb (Phormium tenax), having very long, sword-shaped, distichous leaves which furnish a fine, strong fiber very valuable for cordage and the like. (b) The fiber itself. -- New Zealand tea (Bot.), a myrtaceous shrub (Leptospermum scoparium) of New Zealand and…

considered as marked by a nick; the exact point or critical moment. To cut it off in the very nick. Howell. This nick of time is the critical occasion for the gainger of a point. L'Estrange.

minute and very careful workmanship in drawing, painting, or the like, esp. when bestowed on unimportant detail.

sharp remorse his heart did prick and nip. Spenser. To nip in the bud, to cut off at the verycommencement of growth; to kill in the incipient stage.

teless and odorless, comprising four fifths of the atmosphere by volume. It is chemically very inert in the free state, and as such is incapable of supporting life (hence the name azote still used by French chemists); but it forms many important compounds, as ammonia, nitric acid, the cyanides, etc, and is a constituen…

rin in the presence of sulphuric acid. It is extremely unstable and terribly explosive. A very dilute solution is used in medicine as a neurotic under the name of glonion. [Written also nitroglycerine.]

atute to the contrary. This dispensing power was abolished by the Bill of Rights. In this very reign [Henry III.] the practice of dispensing with statutes by a non obstante was introduced. Hallam. Non obstante veredicto Etym: [LL.] (Law), a judgment sometimes entered by order of the court, for the plaintiff, notwithsta…

Hence, the highest point; culmination. In the very noon of that brilliant life which was destined to be so soon, and so fatally, overshadowed. Motley. High noon, the exact meridian; midday. -- Noon of night, midnight. [Poetic] Dryden.

. See Following, a., 2. -- North star, the star toward which the north pole of the earth very nearly points, and which accordingly seems fixed and immovable in the sky. The star a (alpha) of the Little Bear, is our present north star, being distant from the pole about 1º 25', and from year to year approaching slowly n…

of wax, fig., a person who is pliant and easily influenced. "A nose of wax to be turned every way." Massinger -- Nose piece, the nozzle of a pipe, hose, bellows, etc.; the end piece of a microscope body, to which an objective is attached. -- To hold, put, or bring one's nose to the grindstone. See under Grindstone.…

or etymological signification. [Obs.] "Conscience" is a Latin word, and, according to the very notation of it, imports a double or joint knowledge. South.

Very lately; not long ago. They that but now, for honor and for plate, Made the sea blush with blood, resign their hate. Waller.

A division of opisthobranchiate mollusks, having no shell except while very young. The gills are naked and situated upon the back or sides. See Ceratobranchia.

noperative; ineffectual. If all are pardoned, and pardoned as a mere act of clemency, the very substance of government is made nugatory. I. Taylor.

A very small libratory motion of the earth's axis, by which its inclination to the plane of the ecliptic is constantly varying by a small amount.

the genus Nucula. To be, or lie, in a nutshell, to be within a small compass; to admit of very brief or simple determination or statement. "The remedy lay in a nutshell." Macaulay.

Any Australian bat of the genus Nyctophilus, having a very simple nasal appendage.