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he thing applied or used as a means to an end; an apparatus or device; as, to use various appliances; a mechanical appliance; a machine with its appliances.

ents, or utensils, for a given duty, experimental or operative; any complex instrument or appliance, mechanical or chemical, for a specific action or operation; machinery; mechanism.

An appliance resembling a small boot furnished with straps, buckles, etc., used to correct or prevent distortions in the lower extremities of children. Dunglison.

An appliance consisting of an elastic rod, with a number of horse hairs stretched from end to end of it, used in playing on a stringed instrument.

r science of descriptive drawing; especially, the art or science of drawing by mechanical appliances and mathematical rule.

acter and habits, to institutions, the state, etc. Diseases desperate grown, By desperate appliances are relieved. Shak. The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public counsels have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have every where perished. Madison. Disease germ…

An appliance, as a roller, in a printing press, for distributing ink.

er having walls and floor, often of masonry and communicating with deep water, but having appliances for excluding it; -- used in constructing or repairing ships. The name includes structures used for the examination, repairing, or building of vessels, as graving docks, floating docks, hydraulic docks, etc. -- Floatin…

To treat methodically with remedies, bandages, or curative appliances, as a sore, an ulcer, a wound, or a wounded or diseased part.

An appliance to a sewing machine for felling a seam.

-- Flint mill. (a) (Pottery) A mill in which flints are ground. (b) (Mining) An obsolete appliance for lighting the miner at his work, in which flints on a revolving wheel were made to produce a shower of sparks, which gave light, but did not inflame the fire damp. Knight. -- Flint stone, a hard, siliceous stone; a f…

An appliance for the destruction of insects, consisting of a shallow iron box, containing kerosene or coated with tar or other sticky substance, which may be mounted on wheels.

The appliance by which the dose is administred.

ed; as, an immovable estate. See Immovable, n. Blackstone. Immovable apparatus (Med.), an appliance, like the plaster of paris bandage, which keeps fractured parts firmly in place. -- Immovable feasts (Eccl.), feasts which occur on a certain day of the year and do not depend on the date of Easter; as, Christmas, the E…

The means and appliances by which anything is kept in action or a desired result is obtained; a complex system of parts adapted to a purpose. An indispensable part of the machinery of state. Macaulay. The delicate inflexional machinery of the Aryan languages. I. Taylor (The Alphabet).

ein, conveyed under public authority from one post office to another; the whole system of appliances used by government in the conveyance and delivery of mail matter. There is a mail come in to-day, with letters dated Hague. Tatler.

he Note under Engineering. -- Mechanical maneuvers (Mil.), the application of mechanical appliances to the mounting, dismounting, and moving of artillery. Farrow. -- Mechanical philosophy, the principles of mechanics applied to the inverstigation of physical phenomena. -- Mechanical powers, certain simple instrument…

. It was originally fired by means of a match, or matchlock, for which several mechanical appliances (including the flintlock, and finally the percussion lock) were successively substituted. This arm has been generally superseded by the rifle.

at guns, mortars, and howitzers; artillery; sometimes, a general term for all weapons and appliances used in war. All the battlements their ordnance fire. Shak. Then you may hear afar off the awful roar of his [Rufus Choate's] rifled ordnance. E. Ererett. Ordnance survey, the official survey of Great Britain and Irelan…

The treatment of deformities in the human body by mechanical appliances.