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To cover with heaps; or in great abundance; to fill or overfill; to load. To pile arms or muskets (Mil.), to place three guns together so that they may stand upright, supporting each other; to stack arms.

-- so called from Samuel Plimsoll, by whose efforts the act of Parliament to prevent overloading was procured.

The firing pin of a breechloader. Plunger bucket, a piston, without a valve, in a pump. -- Plunger pole, the pump rod of a pumping engine. -- Plunger pump, a pump, as for water, having a plunger, instead of a piston, to act upon the water. It may be single-acting or double- acting

Very heavy; weighty; as, a ponderous shield; a ponderous load; the ponderous elephant. The sepulcher . . . Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws. Shak.

Used in proving or testing; as, a proof load, or proof charge.

f Nature's womb, that in quaternion run. Milton. The triads and quaternions with which he loaded his sentences. Sir W. Scott.

the sea, or at the side of a harbor, river, or other navigable water, for convenience in loading and unloading vessels. [Written also key.]

A frame fitted to a wagon for carrying hay, straw, or grain on the stalk, or other bulky loads.

caup. (b) The redhead. -- Raft port (Naut.), a large, square port in a vessel's side for loading or unloading timber or other bulky articles; a timber or lumber port.

The rod used in ramming home the charge in a muzzle-loading firearm.

h a gun using fixed ammunition or metallic cartridge cases; -- distinguished from breech- loading (abbr. B. L.), applied to all guns loading with the charge in bags, and formerly from quick-fire. Rapid-fire guns in the navy also sometimes include automatic or semiautomatic rapid-fire guns; the former being automatic gu…

ake up. [Obs. or R.] And having her from Trompart lightly reared, Upon his set the lovely load. Spenser.

A tool used for applying a fresh percussion cap or primer to a cartridge shell in reloading it.

n the crown andd the spring or abutment, including, and having especial reference to, the loading or filling behind the shell of the vault. The reins are to a vault nearly what the haunches are to an arch, and when a vault gives way by thrusting outward, it is because its reins are not sufficiently filled up.…

To lade or load again.

ngine, a small auxiliary engine for automatically adjusting the steam distribution to the load on the main engine. [Webster 1913 Suppl.]

only obstacle to his success in that demand. Robertson. This bank is thought the greatest load on the Genoese, and the managers of it have been represented as a second kind of senate. Addison.

In breech-loading firearms, a device for withdrawing a cartridge shell from the barrel. (b) (Surg.)

for cannon, in which one side of the groove is made deeper than the other, to facilitate loading with shot having projections which enter by the deeper part of the grooves.

A laborer, especially a deck hand, on a river steamboat, who moves the cargo, loads and unloads wood, and the like; in an opprobrious sense, a shiftless vagrant who lives by chance jobs. [Western U.S.]