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An instrument for boring or perforating soils or rocks, for determining the quality of soils, or the nature of the rocks or strata upon which they lie, and for obtaining water. Auger bit, a bit with a cutting edge or blade like that of an anger.

An instrument applied to the ears to give aid in hearing; a kind of ear trumpet. Mansfield.

An instrument for cleansing the ear, consisting of a small piece of sponge on an ivory or bone handle.

An instrument for examining the condition of the ear.

An instrument for the instantaneous self-recording or printing of time. Knight.

Supplying its own power; -- applied to an instrument of the nature of a water-ram.

A zitherlike musical instrument, provided with dampers which, when depressed, deaden some strings, leaving free others that form a chord.

An instrument to measure the growth of plants. Goodale.

An instrument for measuring the magnifying power of a lens or system of lenses.

An instrument for pruning trees, consisting of two blades, or a blade and a hook, fixed on the end of a long rod.

Of or instrument to birds.

Wanting dexterity in the use of the hands, or of instruments; not dexterous; without skill; clumsy; wanting ease, grace, or effectiveness in movement; ungraceful; as, he was awkward at a trick; an awkward boy. And dropped an awkward courtesy. Dryden.

A pointed instrument for piercing small holes, as in leather or wood; used by shoemakers, saddlers, cabinetmakers, etc. The blade is differently shaped and pointed for different uses, as in the brad awl, saddler's awl, shoemaker's awl, etc.

A tool or instrument of steel, or of iron with a steel edge or blade, for felling trees, chopping and splitting wood, hewing timber, etc. It is wielded by a wooden helve or handle, so fixed in a socket or eye as to be in the same plane with the blade. The broadax, or carpenter's ax, is an ax for hewing timber, made hea…

Of or pertaining to the azimuth; in a horizontal circle. Azimuthal error of a transit instrument, its deviation in azimuth from the plane of the meridian.

An instrument which, in conjunction with another making an absolute disposition, constitutes a trust.

The reading of the leveling staff in its unchanged position when the leveling instrument has been taken to a new position; a sight directed backwards to a station previously occupied. Cf. Foresight, n., 3.

An instrument formerly used for taking the altitude of the heavenly bodies, but now superseded by the quadrant and sextant; -- so called because the observer turned his back to the body observed.

A musical wind instrument, now used chiefly in the Highlands of Scotland.

Pertaining to projection, or to a projectile. Ballistic pendulum, an instrument consisting of a mass of wood or other material suspended as a pendulum, for measuring the force and velocity of projectiles by means of the arc through which their impact impels it.