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A little pipe, or hollow cylinder of paper, filled with powder or combustible matter, to be thrown into the air while burning, so as to burst there with a crack. Lampoons, like squibs, may make a present blaze. Waller. The making and selling of fireworks, and squibs . . . is punishable. Blackstone.

To discolor by the application of foreign matter; to make foul; to spot; as, to stain the hand with dye; armor stained with blood.

A composition of combustible matter used in the heading of rockets, in mines, etc., which, exploding of a air, presents a starlike appearance.

f force or vigor; to disable. The pens of historians, writing thereof, seemed starved for matter in an age so fruitful of memorable actions. Fuller. The powers of their minds are starved by disuse. Locke.

ent, and are invested, as commonwealth, with full power in their several spheres over all matters not expressly inhibited.

thing is already. The phrase is also used retrospectively, as when, on a treaty of place, matters return to the status quo ante bellum, or are left in statu quo ante bellum, i.e., the state (or, in the state) before the war.

A cyst containing matter like suet.

A blue coloring matter found in some stentors. See Stentor, 2.

above one another in the manner of steps. -- To take steps, to take action; to move in a matter.

A coloring matter found in the fæces, a product of the alteration of the bile pigments in the intestinal canal, -- identical with hydrobilirubin.

ed for omission; to mark with the word stet, or with a series of dots below or beside the matter; as, the proof reader stetted a deled footnote.

ights or for a friend. [Colloq.] -- To stick upon, to dwell upon; not to forsake. "If the matter be knotty, the mind must stop and buckle to it, and stick upon it with labor and thought." Locke.

Concreted earthy or mineral matter; also, any particular mass of such matter; as, a house built of stone; the boy threw a stone; pebbles are rounded stones. "Dumb as a stone." Chaucer. They had brick for stone, and slime . . . for mortar. Gen. xi. 3.

hose parts which are already sufficiently corroded, by applying varnish or other covering matter with a brush, but allowing the acid to act on the other parts.

To stretch beyond its proper limit; to do violence to, in the matter of intent or meaning; as, to strain the law in order to convict an accused person. There can be no other meaning in this expression, however some may pretend to strain it. Swift.

That through which any liquid is passed for purification or to separate it from solid matter; anything, as a screen or a cloth, used to strain a liquid; a device of the character of a sieve or of a filter; specifically, an openwork or perforated screen, as for the end of the suctionpipe of a pump, to prevent large soli…

ion, shear or tangential stress. Rankine. Stress is the mutual action between portions of matter. Clerk Maxwell.

ock by a glacier passing over it; the striæ on the surface of a shell; a stria of nervous matter in the brain.

Refuse or worthless matter; hence, also, foolish or irrational language; nonsense; trash. Anger would indite Such woeful stuff as I or Shadwell write. Dryden.

Resembling tow; having long, loose scales, or matted filaments, like tow; stupose.