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(Aluco flammeus, or Strix flammea), which frequents barns and other buildings. -- Barn swallow (Zoöl.), the common American swallow (Hirundo horreorum), which attaches its nest of mud to the beams and rafters of barns.

The lower part of a wall, pier, or column, when treated as a separate feature, usually in projection, or especially ornamented.

A board, or other woodwork, carried round the walls of a room and touching the floor, to form a base and protect the plastering; -- also called washboard (in England), mopboard, and scrubboard.

The outer wall of the ground story of a building, or of a part of that story, when treated as a distinct substructure. ( See Base, n., 3 (a).) Hence: The rooms of a ground floor, collectively. Basement membrane (Anat.), a delicate membrane composed of a single layer of flat cells, forming the substratum upon which, in…

ense, or in the siege, of a fortified place. The high bastiles . . . which overtopped the walls. Holland.

and so constructed that it is able to defend by a flanking fire the adjacent curtain, or wall which extends from one bastion to another. Two adjacent bastions are connected by the curtain, which joins the flank of one with the adjacent flank of the other. The distance between the flanks of a bastion is called the gorg…

A wall built across the ditch of a fortification, with a sluice gate to regulate the height of water in the ditch on both sides of the wall.

To bathe one's self; to take a bath or baths. "They bathe in summer." Waller.

Furring done with small pieces nailed directly upon the wall.

beat repeatedly and with violence, so as to bruise, shatter, or demolish; as, to batter a wall or rampart.

1. (Mil.) An engine used in ancient times to beat down the walls of besieged places.

An inclosure with mud or stone walls, for keeping cattle; a fortified inclosure. [Obs.] Spenser.

A principal compartment of the walls, roof, or other part of a building, or of the whole building, as marked off by the buttresses, vaulting, mullions of a window, etc.; one of the main divisions of any structure, as the part of a bridge between two piers.

A window forming a bay or recess in a room, and projecting outward from the wall, either in a rectangular, polygonal, or semicircular form; -- often corruptly called a bow window.

ch rests upon its supports; as, a lintel or beam may have four inches of bearing upon the wall.

A course of stone or brick in a wall.

A collection of small houses surrounded by a wall and occupied by a community of Beguines.

To deviate or incline from an angle of 90 Their houses are very ill built, the walls bevel. Swift.

The nest of a small swallow (Collocalia nidifica and several allied species), of China and the neighboring countries, which is mixed with soups.

To treat or impregnate with bitumen; to cement with bitumen. "Bituminated walls of Babylon." Feltham.