Search the Dictionary

Absolute. -- Equation box, or Equational box, a system of differential gearing used in spinning machines for regulating the twist of the yarn. It resembles gearing used in equation clocks for showing apparent time. -- Equation of the center (Astron.), the difference between the place of a planet as supposed to move u…

claimed all ambition to match his pastoral pipe. A. W. Ward. At erst, at first; at the beginning. -- Now at erst, at this present time. Chaucer.

A suffix signifying beginning, beginning to be; as, adolescent, effervescent, etc.

ng; to draw upon and bite with acid, as a plate of metal. I was etching a plate at the beginning of 1875. Hamerton.

Without beginning or end of existence; always existing. The eternal God is thy refuge. Deut. xxxiii. 27. To know wether there were any real being, whose duration has been eternal. Locke.

Infinite duration, without beginning in the past or end in the future; also, duration without end in the future; endless time. The high and lofty One, that inhabiteth eternity. Is. lvii. 15.

The evening before a holiday, -- from the Jewish mode of reckoning the day as beginning at sunset. not at midnight; as, Christians eve is the evening before Christmas; also, the period immediately preceding some important event. "On the eve of death." Keble. Eve churr (Zoöl), the European goatsucker or nightjar; -- cal…

Beginning of evening. "At the quiet evenfall." Tennyson.

The latter part and close of the day, and the beginning of darkness or night; properly, the decline of the day, or of the sum. In the ascending scale Of heaven, the stars that usher evening rose. Milton.

xasperated; imbittered. [Obs.] Shak. Like swallows which the exasperate dying year Sets spinning. Mrs. Browning.

A beginning; an introduction; especially, the introductory part of a discourse or written composition, which prepares the audience for the main subject; the opening part of an oration. "The exordium of repentance." Jer. Taylor. "Long prefaces and exordiums. " Addison.

or false appearance; deceitfulness; that which misleads the eye or the mind; deception. Winning by conquest what the first man lost, By fallacy surprised. Milton.

A part which acts by falling, as a stamp in a fulling mill, or the device in a spinning machine to arrest motion when a thread breaks.

the course of human life. They are represented, one as holding the distaff, a second as spinning, and the third as cutting off the thread.

or wrought into a compact substance by rolling and pressure, with lees or size, without spinning or weaving. It were a delicate stratagem to shoe A troop of horse with felt. Shak .

The loins of a horse, beginning at the place where the hinder part of the saddle rests. Arris fillet. See under Arris.

Completion; -- opposed to Ant: start, or Ant: beginning.

ciples. Adam was first formed, then Eve. 1 Tim. ii. 13. At first, At the first, at the beginning or origin. -- First or last, at one time or another; at the beginning or end. And all are fools and lovers first or last. Dryden.

To fall form the pitch. To flat out, to fail from a promising beginning; to make a bad ending; to disappoint expectations. [Colloq.]

steeping in bicarbinate of soda and acidulated liquids, and prepared for bleaching and spinning like cotton. Knight. -- Flax dresser, one who breaks and swingles flax, or prepares it for the spinner. -- Flax mill, a mill or factory where flax is spun or linen manufactured. -- Flax puller, a machine for pulling flax…