Search the Dictionary

To pierce the hull of, as a ship, with a cannon ball.

drifting ice. -- Ice paper, a transparent film of gelatin for copying or reproducing; papier glacé. -- Ice petrel (Zoöl.), a shearwater (Puffinus gelidus) of the Antarctic seas, abundant among floating ice. -- Ice pick, a sharp instrument for breaking ice into small pieces. -- Ice pilot, a pilot who has charge of…

I [Obs.] Piers Plowman.

To pierce with a pale; to put to death by fixing on a sharp stake. See Empale. Then with what life remains, impaled, and left To writhe at leisure round the bloody stake. Addison.

Incapable of being penetrated or pierced; not admitting the passage of other bodies; not to be entered; impervious; as, an impenetrable shield. Highest woods impenetrable To star or sunlight. Milton.

to wager; to pledge. [Obs.] Against the which he has imponed, as I take it, six French rapiers and poniards. Shak.

The top member of a pillar, pier, wall, etc., upon which the weight of an arch rests.

Impregnated; made prolific. The scorching ray Here pierceth not, impregnate with disease. Byron.

To pierce, as with a dart.

birth; a young babe; sometimes, a child several years of age. And tender cries of infants pierce the ear. C. Pitt.

To set; to fasten or fix by piercing or thrusting in; as, to infix a sting, spear, or dart. Shak. The fatal dart a ready passage found, And deep within her heart infixed the wound. Dryden.

Deepest within; farthest from the surface or external part; innermost. And pierce the inmost center of the earth. Shak. The silent, slow, consuming fires, Which on my inmost vitals prey. Addison.

ntensify colors; to intensify a photographic negative; to intensify animosity. Bacon. How piercing is the sting of pride By want embittered and intensified. Longfellow.

tions of the sea. Lest evil tidings, with too rude irruption Hitting thy aged ear, should pierce too deep. Milton.

owardly, nocturnal, and gregarious. They feed largely on carrion, and are noted for their piercing and dismal howling.

e, less properly, any narrow vertical surface of wall, as the of a chimney-breast or of a pier, as distinguished from its face. Gwilt.

To pierce with a javelin. [R.] Tennyson.

A wharf or pier extending from the shore.

joint or joints; to fit together; to prepare so as to fit together; as, to joint boards. Pierced through the yielding planks of jointed wood. Pope.

A projection in a building; also, a pier or mole; a jetty. Shak.