Search the Dictionary

limestone; a variety of calcite, capable of being polished and used for architectural and ornamental purposes. The color varies from white to black, being sometimes yellow, red, and green, and frequently beautifully veined or clouded. The name is also given to other rocks of like use and appearance, as serpentine or ve…

An ornamental border made of paper, pasterboard, metal, etc., put under the glass which covers a framed picture; as, the mat of a daguerreotype. Mat grass. (Bot.) (a) A low, tufted, European grass (Nardus stricta). (b) Same as Matweed. -- Mat rush (Bot.), a kind of rush (Scirpus lacustris) used in England for making m…

An ornamental border. See 3d Mat, 4.

A large, ornamental, marine, univalve shell of the genus Melo. Melon beetle (Zoöl.), a small leaf beetle (Diabrotiea vittata), which damages the leaves of melon vines. -- Melon cactus, Melon thistle. (a) (Bot.) A genus of cactaceous plants (Melocactus) having a fleshy and usually globose stem with the surface divided…

Resembling the arts of a harlot; alluring by false show; gaudily and deceitfully ornamental; tawdry; as, meretricious dress or ornaments. -- Mer`e*tri"cious*ly, adv. -- Mer`e*tri"cious*ness, n.

A size of type between nonpareil and minion; -- used in ornamental borders, etc.

Anything cast in a mold, or which appears to be so, as grooved or ornamental bars of wood or metal.

resent a name, or a part of it (usually the initials). Monograms are often used on seals, ornamental pins, rings, buttons, and by painters, engravers, etc., to distinguish their works. Monogram.

jesty of worth. Byron. Mountain anthelope (Zoöl.), the goral. -- Mountain ash (Bot.), an ornamental tree, the Pyrus (Sorbus) Americana, producing beautiful bunches of red berries. Its leaves are pinnate, and its flowers white, growing in fragrant clusters. The European species is the P. aucuparia, or rowan tree. -- M…

An ornamental foliation consisting of more than five divisions or foils. [R.] See Foil.

Turned so as to resemble nulls. Nulled work (Cabinetwork), ornamental turned work resembling nulls or beads strung on a rod.

ructional parts, together with the under side of the covering, or its lining, are treated ornamentally, and left to form the ceiling of an apartment below, as in a church, a public hall, and the like. -- Open vowel or consonant. See Open, a., 9.

An ornamental tree of the genus Maclura (M. aurantiaca), closely allied to the mulberry (Morus); also, its fruit. The tree was first found in the country of the Osage Indians, and bears a hard and inedible fruit of an orangelike appearance. See Bois d'arc.

A plant (Ricinus communis) with ornamental peltate and palmately cleft foliage, growing as a woody perennial in the tropics, and cultivated as an herbaceous annual in temperate regions; -- called also castor-oil plant. [Sometimes corrupted into palmcrist.]

American deer (Cervus, or Blastocerus, campestris). -- Pampas grass (Bot.), a very tall ornamental grass (Gynerium argenteum) with a silvery-white silky panicle. It is a native of the pampas of South America.

plume or bunch of feathers, esp. such a bunch worn on the helmet; any military plume, or ornamental group of feathers. A panache of variegated plumes. Prescott.

(Parotia sefilata). The long-billed paradise birds (Epimachinæ) also include some highly ornamental species, as the twelve-wired paradise bird (Seleucides alba), which is black, yellow, and white, with six long breast feathers on each side, ending in long, slender filaments. See Bird of paradise in the Vocabulary. --…

Ornamental hangings, furniture, etc., as of a state apartment; rich and elegant robes worn by men of rank; -- chiefly in the plural. [Obs.] Lords in paraments on their coursers. Chaucer. Chamber of paraments, presence chamber of a monarch.

Plasterwork; esp.: (a) A kind of decorative plasterwork in raised ornamental figures, formerly used for the internal and external decoration of houses. (b) In modern architecture, the plastering of the inside of flues, intended to give a smooth surface and help the draught.

An ornamental and diversified arrangement of beds or plots, in which flowers are cultivated, with intervening spaces of gravel or turf for walking on.