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Webster’s Dictionary (1828)



1,306 words match “FIRST”

BIENNIAL a.
Continuing for two years, and then perishing, as plants which form roots and leaves the first year, and produce fruit the second.
BIESTINGS; BEESTINGS n.
The first milk given by a cow after calving. B. Jonson. The thick and curdy milk . . . commonly called biestings. Newton. (1574).
BIRTHRIGHT n.
n heir, or civil liberty under a free constitution; esp. the rights or inheritance of the first born. Lest there be any . . . profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. Heb. xii. 16.
BISCUIT n.
Earthen ware or porcelain which has undergone the first baking, before it is subjected to the glazing.
BITTERSWEET n.
s (Solanum dulcamara); woody nightshade. The whole plant is poisonous, and has a taste at first sweetish and then bitter. The branches are the officinal dulcamara.
BLACK LETTER n.
ld English or Gothic letter, in which the Early English manuscripts were written, and the first English books were printed. It was conspicuous for its blackness. See Type.
BLACK MONDAY n.
The first Monday after the holidays; -- so called by English schoolboys. Halliwell.
BLADE n.
applied to the spire of grasses. The crimson dulse . . . with its waving blade. Percival. First the blade, then ear, after that the full corn in the ear. Mark iv. 28.
BLANK n.
A kind of base silver money, first coined in England by Henry V., and worth about 8 pence; also, a French coin of the seventeenth century, worth about 4 pence. Nares.
BLASTOMERE n.
One of the segments first formed by the division of the ovum. Balfour.
BLEMISH n.
h impairs reputation. He shall take two he lambs without blemish, and one ewe lamb of the first year without blemish. Lev. xiv. 10. The reliefs of an envious man are those little blemishes and imperfections that discover themselves in an illustrious character. Spectator.
BLINK n.
A glimpse or glance. This is the first blink that ever I had of him. Bp. Hall.
BLOOD v.
To give (hounds or soldiers) a first taste or sight of blood, as in hunting or war. It was most important too that his troops should be blooded. Macaulay.
BLUE a.
lor wearing a naval uniform. -- Blue jaundice. See under Jaundice. -- Blue laws, a name first used in the eighteenth century to describe certain supposititious laws of extreme rigor reported to have been enacted in New Haven; hence, any puritanical laws. [U. S.] -- Blue light, a composition which burns with a brillia…
BLUSH n.
reddish color; a rosy tint. Light's last blushes tinged the distant hills. Lyttleton. At first blush, or At the first blush, at the first appearance or view. "At the first blush, we thought they had been ships come from France." Hakluyt.
BOCARDO n.
A form of syllogism of which the first and third propositions are particular negatives, and the middle term a universal affirmative. Baroko and Bocardo have been stumbling blocks to the logicians. Bowen.
BOCKING n.
, to cover carpets, etc.; -- so called from the town of Bocking, in England, where it was first made.
BOLOGNA n.
diated barite, or barium sulphate, found in roundish masses composed of radiating fibers, first discovered near Bologna. It is phosphorescent when calcined. -- Bologna vial, a vial of unannealed glass which will fly into pieces when its surface is scratched by a hard body, as by dropping into it a fragment of flint; w…
BOND n.
h by the change of the second stretcher line so that its joints come in the middle of the first, and the same position of stretchers comes back every fifth line; Combined cross and English bond, where the inner part of the wall is laid in the one method, the outer in the other.
BOOT n.
pulling on boots. -- Boots and saddles (Cavalry Tactics), the trumpet call which is the first signal for mounted drill. -- Sly boots. See Slyboots, in the Vocabulary.
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