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A noun suffix signifying action, state, or quality; also, that which relates to the action or state; as in emergence, diffidence, diligence, influence, difference, excellence. See -ance.

An internal process of the sternal plates in the thorax of insects.

and the like; especially, the art of producing such lines, etc., in the surface of metal plates or blocks of wood. Engraving is used for the decoration of the surface itself; also, for producing an original, from which a pattern or design may be printed on paper.

e orders of Nemertina, characterized by the presence of a peculiar armature of spines or plates in the proboscis.

One of the first pair of lateral plates in the plastron of turtles.

A defense for the shoulder, composed of flexible overlapping plates of metal, used in the 15th century; -- the origin of the modern epaulette. Fairholt.

That pert of grammar which relates to the changes in the form of the words in a language; inflection.

To explain; to unfold. [Obs.] Like Solon's self explatest the knotty laws. B. Jonson.

it from; to speculate on; to put upon. [Recent] In no sense whatever does a man who accumulates a fortune by legitimate industry exploit his employés or make his capital "out of" anybody else. W. G. Sumner.

on to produce that effect; but in its true application, as employed in American law, it relates only to crimes, and signifies a law which retroacts, by way of criminal punishment, upon that which was not a crime before its passage, or which raises the grade of an offense, or renders an act punishable in a more severe m…

One who expostulates. Lamb.

o enlarge, as a surface or volume; to expand; to spread; to amplify; as, to extend metal plates by hammering or rolling them.

surface of an object which comes with another object to which it is fastened; -- said of plates, angle irons, etc., that are riveted together in shipwork.

, the grain of timber which is transverse to the annular rings or plates; the direction of the medullary rays in oak and some other timber. Knight.

The bone or cartilage of the tarsus, which articulates with the fibula, and corresponds to the calcaneum in man and most mammals.

mmon European sandpiper (Tringoides hypoleucus); -- so called because it continually oscillates its body. Fiddler crab. (Zoöl.) See Fiddler, n., 2.

An oviparous, vertebrate animal usually having fins and a covering scales or plates. It breathes by means of gills, and lives almost entirely in the water. See Pisces.

of a fish. -- Fish-tail propeller (Steamship), a propeller with a single blade that oscillates like the tail of a fish when swimming.

One of several planks, smaller timbers, or iron plates, which are secured together, side by side, to make a large girder or built beam.

Characterized by being separable into thin plates or folia; as, graphite has a foliated structure.