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A friend or comrade; a companion; a familiar and customary acquaintance. [Obs.] My noble gossips, ye have been too prodigal. Shak.

A grandmother; a grandam; familiarly, an old woman. Granny's bend, or Granny's knot (Naut.), a kind of insecure knot or hitch; a reef knot crossed the wrong way.

To make accustomed; to accustom; to familiarize. Our English dogs, who were habituated to a colder clime. Sir K. Digby. Men are first corrupted . . . and next they habituate themselves to their vicious practices. Tillotson.

Habitual association, intercourse, or familiarity. To write well, one must have frequent habitudes with the best company. Dryden.

An exclamation of respectful or reverent salutation, or, occasionally, of familiar greeting. "Hail, brave friend." Shak. All hail. See in the Vocabulary. -- Hail Mary, a form of prayer made use of in the Roman Catholic Church in invocation of the Virgin. See Ave Maria.

A term of affectionate or kindly and familiar address. "I speak to thee, my heart." Shak.

An exclamation used in addressing a familiar acquaintance. [Obs.] Shak.

Comrade; boon companion; good fellow; -- a term of familiar address and fellowship among sailors. Dickens.

Have or have not; -- a familiar invitation to reciprocal drinking. Shak.

ffairs of a country are managed. [Eng.] To be at home on any subject, to be conversant or familiar with it. -- To feel at home, to be at one's ease. -- To make one's self at home, to conduct one's self with as much freedom as if at home.

Familiarity; intimacy. [Obs.] Chaucer.

Belonging to, or having the characteristics of, home; domestic; familiar; intimate. [Archaic] With all these men I was right homely, and communed with, them long and oft. Foxe. Their homely joys, and destiny obscure. Gray.

Of or pertaining to familiar intercourse; social; affable; conversable; companionable. [R.] His virtues active, chiefly, and homiletical, not those lazy, sullen ones of the cloister. Atterbury.

(Zoöl.), a thrush of Jamaica (Merula leucogenys), resembling the English blackbird in its familiar manners, agreeable song, and dark plumage.

be close or near; as, to keep a ship in with the land. (b) To be on terms of friendship, familiarity, or intimacy with; to secure and retain the favor of. [Colloq.]

Not conversant; not acquainted; not versed; unfamiliar.

the judgment. Locke. Horace laughs to shame all follies and insinuates virtue, rather by familiar examples than by the severity of precepts. Dryden.

Acquaintance; intercourse; familiarity. [Obs.] He lived rather in a fair intelligence than any friendship with the favorites. Clarendon.

To explain or tell the meaning of; to expound; to translate orally into intelligible or familiar language or terms; to decipher; to define; -- applied esp. to language, but also to dreams, signs, conduct, mysteries, etc.; as, to interpret the Hebrew language to an Englishman; to interpret an Indian speech. Emmanuel, wh…

The state of being intimate; close familiarity or association; nearness in friendship.