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Pertaining to, or resembling, orichalch; having a color or luster like that of brass. Maunder.

esembling gold in color, but inferior in value; a mixed metal of the ancients, resembling brass; -- called also aurichalcum, orichalcum, etc.

A variety of brass made to resemble gold by the use of less zinc and more copper in its composition than ordinary brass contains. Its golden color is often heightened by means of lacquer of some sort, or by use of acids. Called also mosaic gold. Ormolu varnish, a varnish applied to metals, as brass, to give the appeara…

An engraved tablet, usually of brass, set up in a public place.

A piece of metal or wood, forming a support to equalize pressure; a brass; a pillow block. [R.]

Especially, a small, pointed and headed piece of brass or other wire (commonly tinned), largely used for fastening clothes, attaching papers, etc.

A pot-shaped cannon; a mortar. [Obs.] "Twelve potguns of brass." Hakluyt.

A common mineral of a pale brass-yellow color and brilliant metallic luster, crystallizing in the isometric system; iron pyrites; iron disulphide. Hence sable coal his massy couch extends, And stars of gold the sparkling pyrite blends. E. Darwin.

. -- Quadrant of altitude, an appendage of the artificial globe, consisting of a slip of brass of the length of a quadrant of one of the great circles of the globe, and graduated. It may be fitted to the meridian, and being movable round to all points of the horizon, serves as a scale in measuring altitudes, azimuths,…

ds; specifically, a vessel in the form of a cylinder open at one end, or a hollow ball of brass with two apertures, so contrived as to greatly intensify a musical tone by its resonance. It is used for the study and analysis of complex sounds.

Violence; force; fury. [Obs.] Whose raging rigor neither steel nor brass could stay. Spenser.

An instrument, formerly used for taking the sun's altitude, consisting of a brass ring suspended by a swivel, with a hole at one side through which a solar ray entering indicated the altitude on the graduated inner surface opposite.

A thin plate of metal (usually brass) of the same height as the type, and used for printing lines, as between columns on the same page, or in tabular work.

A brass wind instrument, like a bass trumpet, so contrived that it can be lengthened or shortened according to the tone required; -- said to be the same as the trombone. [Written also sagbut.] Moore (Encyc. of Music).

To avoid unnecessary expense or expenditure; to prevent waste; to be economical. Brass ordnance saveth in the quantity of the material. Bacon.

A variety of the common cabbage (Brassica oleracea major), having curled leaves, -- much cultivated for winter use.

A powerful instrument of brass, curved somewhat like the Roman buccina, or tuba.

A name given to a numerous family of brass wind instruments with valves, invented by Antoine Joseph Sax (known as Adolphe Sax), of Belgium and Paris, and much used in military bands and in orchestras.

A wind instrument of brass, containing a reed, and partaking of the qualities both of a brass instrument and of a clarinet.

A disagreable and embrassing predicament, as it were, a painful rubbing or scraping; a perplexity; a difficulty. The too eager pursuit of this his old enemy through thick and thin has led him into many of these scrapes. Bp. Warburton.