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To equal in number, weight, force, or proportion; to counterpoise, counterbalance, counteract, or neutralize. One expression . . . must check and balance another. Kent.

An artistic dance performed as a theatrical entertainment, or an interlude, by a number of persons, usually women. Sometimes, a scene accompanied by pantomime and dancing.

The whole number of votes cast at an election, or in a given territory or electoral district. Ballot box, a box for receiving ballots.

st Indian plant ( Momordica balsamina), of the gourd family, with red or orange-yellow cucumber-shaped fruit of the size of a walnut, used as a vulnerary, and in liniments and poultices. -- Balsam fir (Bot.), the American coniferous tree, Abies balsamea, from which the useful Canada balsam is derived. -- Balsam of co…

trap, or any narrow ligament with which a thing is encircled, or fastened, or by which a number of things are tied, bound together, or confined; a fetter. Every one's bands were loosed. Acis xvi 26.

t, and not through embrasures. -- Barbette gun, or Barbette battery, a single gun, or a number of guns, mounted in barbette, or partially protected by a parapet or turret. -- Barbette carriage, a gun carriage which elevates guns sufficiently to be in barbette. [See Illust. of Casemate.]

The number from which a mathematical table is constructed; as, the base of a system of logarithms.

A game of ball, so called from the bases or bounds ( four in number) which designate the circuit which each player must endeavor to make after striking the ball.

of an acid to unite with one or more atoms or equivalents of a base, as indicated by the number of replaceable hydrogen atoms contained in the acid.

Battery en écharpe, one that plays obliquely. -- Battery gun, a gun capable of firing a number, of shots simultaneously or successively without stopping to load. -- Battery wagon, a wagon employed to transport the tools and materials for repair of the carriages, etc., of the battery. -- In battery, projecting, as a…

A catalogue of persons, for the rest of whose souls a certain number of prayers are to be said or counted off on the beads of a chaplet; hence, a catalogue in general. On Fame's eternal beadroll worthy to be field. Spenser. It is quite startling, on going over the beadroll of English worthies, to find how few are direc…

ind force devised by Sir F. Beaufort, R. N., in 1805, in which the force is indicated by numbers from 0 to 12.

To drag through, encumber with, or fix in, the mire; to soil by passing through mud or dirt. Bemired and benighted in the dog. Burke.

To soil or encumber with mire and dirt. [Obs.] Shak.

und, or a kind of natural terrace, near a lake or river. Bench mark (Leveling), one of a number of marks along a line of survey, affixed to permanent objects, to show where leveling staffs were placed. -- Bench of bishops, the whole body of English prelates assembled in council. -- Bench plane, any plane used by carp…

Divided into an even number of bends; -- said of a shield or its charge. Cussans.

A room in which a number of the officers or ship's company mess and reside.

More than that; over and above; not included in the number, or in what has been mentioned; moreover; in addition. The men said unto Lot, Hast thou here any besides Gen. xix. 12. To all beside, as much an empty shade, An Eugene living, as a Cæsar dead. Pope.

sent to the consignee of the goods. -- Bill of mortality, an official statement of the number of deaths in a place or district within a given time; also, a district required to be covered by such statement; as, a place within the bills of mortality of London. -- Bill of pains and penalties, a special act of a legisl…

of two things or parts; characterized by two (things). Binary arithmetic, that in which numbers are expressed according to the binary scale, or in which two figures only, 0 and 1, are used, in lieu of ten; the cipher multiplying everything by two, as in common arithmetic by ten. Thus, 1 is one; 10 is two; 11 is three;…