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The act or process of preparing flax for use by soaking, meceration, and kindred processes; -- also called rotting. See Ret. Ure.

Hence, not lax or indulgent; severe; inflexible; strict; as, a rigid father or master; rigid discipline; rigid criticism; a rigid sentence. The more rigid order of principles in religion and government. Hawthorne.

Rigidity in principle or practice; strictness; -- opposed to laxity.

implement, with teeth like those of a comb, for removing the seeds and seed vessels from flax, broom corn, etc.

A distaff used in spinning; the staff or frame about which flax is arranged, and from which the thread is drawn in spinning. Chapman. Sad Clotho held the rocke, the whiles the thread By grisly Lachesis was spun with pain, That cruel Atropos eftsoon undid. Spenser.

To expose, as flax, to a process of maceration, etc., for the purpose of separating the fiber; to ret.

See under Giant. -- Salamander's hair or wool (Min.), a species of asbestus or mineral flax. [Obs.] Bacon.

Any plant of several tropical American species of Smilax.

To separate the woody fiber from (flax, hemp, etc.) by beating; to swingle.

An implement or machine for scutching hemp, flax, or cotton; etc.; a scutch; a scutching machine.

of water down the bore hole. It consists of a bag encircling the tubing and filled with flax seed, which swells when wet and fills the space between the tubing and the sides of the hole. -- Seed bud (Bot.), the germ or rudiment of the plant in the embryo state; the ovule. -- Seed coat (Bot.), the covering of a seed.…

Crowded; compact; dense; pressed together. Nor seemed it to relax their serried files. Milton.

A thin piece or fragment; specifically, one of the scales or pieces of the woody part of flax removed by the operation of breaking.

aginous, and some have tough ligneous fibers which are used as a substitute for hemp and flax. Balfour (Cyc. of India).

An oppressive, relaxing wind from the Libyan deserts, chiefly experienced in Italy, Malta, and Sicily.

Lax; not tense; not hard drawn; not firmly extended; as, a slack rope.

To slacken; to become relaxed. "When the body's strongest sinews slake." [R.] Sir J. Davies.

A burrowing rodent (Spalax typhlus), native of Russia and Asia Minor. It has the general appearance of a mole, and is destitute of eyes. Called also mole rat.

held; -- so called from its being made in such a manner as to slip, or become loose, by relaxation of the hand. We stalked over the extensive plains with Killbuck and Lena in the slips, in search of deer. Sir S. Baker.

To blast; to destroy the life or vigor of, as by a stroke or by some visitation. The flax and the barely was smitten. Ex. ix. 31.