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That which fastens or holds; especially, (Naut.) a mooring rope, hawser, or chain; -- called, according to its position, a bow, head, quarter, breast, or stern fast; also, a post on a pier around which hawsers are passed in mooring.

To fix firmly; to make fast; to secure, as by a knot, lock, bolt, etc.; as, to fasten a chain to the feet; to fasten a door or window.

o a more equal enterprise. Shak. For fear, in apprehension lest. "For fear you ne'er see chain nor money more." Shak.

A festering or rankling. The fester of the chain their necks. I. Taylor.

A chain or shackle for the feet; a chain by which an animal is confined by the foot, either made fast or disabled from free and rapid motion; a bond; a shackle. [They] bound him with fetters of brass. Judg. xvi. 21.

To cause to slip down the barrel of a capstan or windlass, as a rope or chain.

the outworks of a fort. (c) A kind of ferryboat which is guided and impelled by means of chains which are anchored on each side of a stream, and pass over wheels on the vessel, the wheels being driven by stream power. (d) The landing platform of a ferry dock. -- Floating cartilage (Med.), a cartilage which moves freel…

a small loose advertising sheet; a handbill. -- Fly snapper (Zoöl.), an American bird (Phainopepla nitens), allied to the chatterers and shrikes. The male is glossy blue-black; the female brownish gray. -- Fly wheel (Mach.), a heavy wheel attached to machinery to equalize the movement (opposing any sudden accelerati…

A little pocket for a watch. Fob chain, a short watch chain worn a watch carried in the fob.

ventional. Still in constraint your suffering sex remains, Or bound in formal or in real chains. Pope.

To cover with froth; as, a horse froths his chain.

.), an apparatus for illustrating certain principles in statics, consisting of a cord or chain attached at one end to a fixed point, and having the other passed over a pulley and sustaining a weight, while one or more other weights are suspended from the cord at points between the fixed support and the pulley. -- Funi…

heel of a watch or clock, designed to equalize the power of the mainspring by having the chain from the barrel which contains the spring wind in a spiral groove on the surface of the cone in such a manner that the diameter of the cone at the point where the chain acts may correspond with the degree of tension of the sp…

To fasten (a bowsprit) to the stem of a vessel by lashings of rope or chain, or by a band of iron. Totten.

icular purpose; a group of laborers under one foreman; a squad; as, a gang of sailors; a chain gang; a gang of thieves.

g and varying motion in machinery. Frictional gearing. See under Frictional. -- Gearing chain, an endless chain transmitted motion from one sprocket wheel to another. See Illust. of Chain wheel. -- Spur gearing, gearing in which the teeth or cogs are ranged round either the concave or the convex surface (properly the…

post with an arm projecting from the top, on which, formerly, malefactors were hanged in chains, and their bodies allowed to remain asa warning.

something hard, unwiedly, or unmanageable. I might well, like the spaniel, gnaw upon the chain that ties me. Sir P. Sidney.

One of the ropes or chains serving as stays for the dolphin striker or the bowsprit; -- called also gobrope and gaubline.

rs in London having been Lombards. -- Golden bull. See under Bull, an edict. -- Golden chain (Bot.), the shrub Cytisus Laburnum, so named from its long clusters of yellow blossoms. -- Golden club (Bot.), an aquatic plant (Orontium aquaticum), bearing a thick spike of minute yellow flowers. -- Golden cup (Bot.), the…