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o another; -- commonly used in the plural; but originally used in the singular only. "I a winding stair found." Chaucer's Dream. Below stairs, in the basement or lower part of a house, where the servants are. -- Flight of stairs, the stairs which make the whole ascent of a story. -- Pair of stairs, a set or flight of…

A stem-winding watch. [Colloq.]

In an opera or oratorio, a coda, or winding up, in an accelerated time. [Written also stretta.]

To climb or move upward by winding or turning. The tree was high; Yet nimbly up from bough to bough I swerved. Dryden.

A reel, or turning instrument, for winding yarn, thread, etc.; -- used chiefly in the plural.

ustment of parts; as, to take up lost motion, as in a bearing; also, to make tight, as by winding, or drawing; as, to take up slack thread in sewing. (r) To make up; to compose; to settle; as, to take up a quarrel. [Obs.] Shak. -- To take up arms. Same as To take arms, above. -- To take upon one's self. (a) To assume…

han, another; as, a tier of seats in a theater. Tiers of a cable, the ranges of fakes, or windings, of a cable, laid one within another when coiled.

Wreathed; twisted; winding. Loudon

Bent in different directions; wreathed; twisted; winding; as, a tortuous train; a tortuous train; a tortuous leaf or corolla. The badger made his dark and tortuous hole on the side of every hill where the copsewood grew thick. Macaulay.

ons of a course, or of a series of occurrences, reckoning from change to change; hence, a winding; a bend; a meander. And all its [the river's] thousand turns disclose. Some fresher beauty varying round. Byron.

The act of one who, or that which, turns; also, a winding; a bending course; a fiexure; a meander. Through paths and turnings often trod by day. Milton.

A winding stairway. [Scot.] Sir W. Scott.

The act of twining or winding round. J. Philips. Twine reeler, a kind of machine for twisting twine; a kind of mule, or spinning machine.

Winding around something; twisting; embracing; climbing by winding about a support; as, the hop is a twinning plant.

To unite by winding one thread, strand, or other flexible substance, round another; to form by convolution, or winding separate things round each other; as, to twist yarn or thread. Shak.

ailing plant; the long, slender stem of any plant that trails on the ground, or climbs by winding round a fixed object, or by seizing anything with its tendrils, or claspers; a creeper; as, the hop vine; the bean vine; the vines of melons, squashes, pumpkins, and other cucurbitaceous plants. There shall be no grapes on…

Turning, or whirling; winding; twining; voluble.

r twining; as, the voluble stem of hop plants. Voluble stem (Bot.), a stem that climbs by winding, or twining, round another body. -- Vol"u*ble*ness, n. -- Vol"u*bly, adv.

ment. (c) To put in a state of renewed or continued motion, as a clock, a watch, etc., by winding the spring, or that which carries the weight; hence, to prepare for continued movement or action; to put in order anew. "Fate seemed to wind him up for fourscore years." Dryden. "Thus they wound up his temper to a pitch."…

Act of winding up, or closing; a concluding act or part; the end.