Search the Dictionary

believe on slight evidence; easly imposed upon; unsuspecting. Landor. Eve, our credulous mother. Milton.

To hum or sing in a low tone; to murmur softly. Here an old grandmother was crooning over a sick child, and rocking it to and fro. Dickens.

Any preternatural labor, in whiche the boly of the child lies across the pelvis of the mother, so that the shoulder, arm, or trunk is the part first presented at the mouth of the uterus.

An ill-natured person. [Colloq.] "Crosspatch, draw the latch." Mother Goose.

gulate or thicken; to cause to congeal; to curdle. Does it curd thy blood To say I am thy mother Shak.

at bores into the pith and kills currant bushes; specif., the larvae of a small clearwing moth (Ægeria tipuliformis) and a longicorn beetle (Psenocerus supernotatus). -- Currant worm (Zoöl.), an insect larva which eats the leaves or fruit of the currant. The most injurious are the currant sawfly (Nematus ventricosus),…

common cutworms are the larvæ of various species of Agrotis and related genera of noctuid moths.

and, as a child while he toddles. [Obs.] Little children when they learn to go By painful mothers daded to and fro. Drayton.

nd in order when more than one reference occurs on a page; -- called also obelisk. Dagger moth (Zoöl.), any moth of the genus Apatalea. The larvæ are often destructive to the foliage of fruit trees, etc. -- Dagger of lath, the wooden weapon given to the Vice in the old Moralities. Shak. -- Double dagger, a mark of re…

nt; -- used of beasts, especially of quadrupeds; sometimes applied in contempt to a human mother. Our sire and dam, now confined to horses, are a relic of this age (13th century) . . . .Dame is used of a hen; we now make a great difference between dame and dam. T. L. K. Oliphant. The dam runs lowing up end down, Lookin…

A mother; -- applied to human beings and quadrupeds. [Obs.] Chaucer.

h. I had rather be married to a death's-head with a bone in his mouth. Shak. Death's-head moth (Zoöl.), a very large European moth (Acherontia atropos), so called from a figure resembling a human skull on the back of the thorax; -- called also death's-head sphinx.

always seeing apparitions and hearing deathwatches. Addison. I did not hear the dog howl, mother, or the deathwatch beat. Tennyson.

in doing a kindness; delicacy of character that unfits for earnest action. You know your mother's delicacy in this point. Cowper.

as, derelict lands. The affections which these exposed or derelict children bear to their mothers, have no grounds of nature or assiduity but civility and opinion. Jer. Taylor.

Pertaining to or resembling the genus Dermestes. The carpet beetle, called the buffalo moth, is a dermestoid beetle. Pop. Sci. Monthly.

An expressed wish; a request; petition. And slowly was my mother brought To yield consent to my desire. Tennyson.

n others; distrustful. [Archaic] You were always extremely diffident of their success. Melmoth.

To thrust; to poke. [Colloq.] You should have seen children . . . dig and push their mothers under the sides, saying thus to them: Look, mother, how great a lubber doth yet wear pearls. Robynson (More's Utopia). To dig down, to undermine and cause to fall by digging; as, to dig down a wall. -- To dig from, out of, out…

Meanness; sordidness. Honors . . . thrown away upon dirt and infamy. Melmoth.