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A turning or bending backward; also, the state of being turned or bent backward; displacement backwards; as, retroversion of the uterus.

Turned backward; having a contrary or opposite direction; hence; opposite or contrary in kind; as, the reverse order or method. "A vice reverse unto this." Gower.

Rolled backward or downward.

bells; as, to ring out the old year and ring in the new. Tennyson. -- To ring the bells backward, to sound the chimes, reversing the common order; -- formerly done as a signal of alarm or danger. Sir W. Scott.

To cause to sway backward and forward, as a body resting on a support beneath; as, to rock a cradle or chair; to cause to vibrate; to cause to reel or totter. A rising earthquake rocked the ground. Dryden.

eplaced by the Julian calendar. In designating the days of the month, the Romans reckoned backward from three fixed points, the calends, the nones, and the ides. The calends were always the first day of the month. The ides fell on the 15th in March, May, July (Quintilis), and October, and on the 13th in other months. T…

Having the anterior nostrils prolonged backward in the form of a slit.

d unworthiness of an object. Scorn at first makes after love the more. Shak. And wandered backward as in scorn, To wait an æon to be born. Emerson.

To move with a reciprocating motion; to move backward and forward, or upward and downward.

- To put to shame, to cause to feel shame; to humiliate; to disgrace. "Let them be driven backward and put to shame that wish me evil." Ps. xl. 14.

ding with shells; consisting of shells, or of a shell. "The shelly shore." Prior. Shrinks backward in his shelly cave. Shak.

To move backwards and forwards, like a shuttle. I had to fly far and wide, shutting athwart the big Babel, wherever his calls and pauses had to be. Carlyle.

In the time past, counting backward from the present; before this or now; ago. w many ages since has Virgil writ Roscommon. About two years since, it so fell out, that he was brought to a great lady's house. Sir P. Sidney.

ase, To ride Skimmington; that is to ride on a horse with a woman, but behind her, facing backward, carrying a distaff, and accompanied by a procession of jeering neighbors making mock music; a cavalcade in ridicule of a henpecked man. The custom was in vogue in parts of England.

Remiss; backward; not using due diligence or care; not earnest or eager; as, slack in duty or service. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness. 2 Pet. iii. 9.

To be remiss or backward; to be negligent.

ling instrument acted upon a solid; also, the velocity, relatively to still water, of the backward current of water produced by the propeller.

n; the spine; rachis; vertebral column. -- Spinal cord, the great nervous cord extending backward from the brain along the dorsal side of the spinal column of a vertebrate animal, and usually terminating in a threadlike appendage called the filum terminale; the spinal, or vertebral, marrow; the myelon. The nervous tis…

A standing without moving forward or backward; a stop; a state or rest.

To hold from proceeding; to withhold; to restrain; to stop; to hold. Him backward overthrew and down him stayed With their rude hands grisly grapplement. Spenser. All that may stay their minds from thinking that true which they heartly wish were false. Hooker.