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A high, steep rock; a precipice. Cliff swallow (Zoöl.), a North American swallow (Petrochelidon lunifrons), which builds its nest against cliffs; the eaves swallow.

A series of limestone strata found in Ohio and farther west, presenting bluffs along the rivers and valleys, formerly supposed to be of one formation, but now known to be partly Silurian and partly Devonian.

Having cliffs; broken; craggy.

A subordinate cliff on a shore, consisting of material that has fallen from the higher cliff above.

A follower of Wyclif, the English reformer; a Lollard.

; to divert. A group children amusing themselves with pushing stones from the top [of the cliff], and watching as they plunged into the lake. Gilpin.

join behind; to be at the back of. A garden . . . with a vineyard backed. Shak. The chalk cliffs which back the beach. Huxley.

d over and beyond the base or support; to overhang; to jut. To the dreadful summit of the cliff That beetles o'er his base into the sea. Shak. Each beetling rampart, and each tower sublime. Wordsworth.

To jut over; to overhang. There is a cliff, whose high and bending head Looks fearfully in the confined deep. Shak.

A cavern in a cliff, at the water level, opening to the air at its farther extremity, so that the waters rush in with each surge and rise in a lofty jet from the extremity.

A high, steep bank, as by a river or the sea, or beside a ravine or plain; a cliff with a broad face. Beach, bluff, and wave, adieu. Whittier.

sepulture. [Obs.] The erthe schook, and stoones weren cloven, and biriels weren opened. Wycliff [Matt. xxvii. 51, 52].

o command or request to come or be present; to summon; as, to call a servant. Call hither Clifford; bid him come amain Shak.

Consisting of, or resembling, chalk; containing chalk; as, a chalky cliff; a chalky taste.

A cliff. [Obs.] That gainst the craggy clifts did loudly roar. Spenser.

A steep, rugged rock; a cough, broken cliff, or point of a rock, on a ledge. From crag to crag the signal fiew. Sir W. Scott.

One accustomed to climb rocks or crags; esp., one who makes a business of climbing the cliffs overhanging the sea to get the eggs of sea birds or the birds themselves.

A sloping plain, esp. one with the upper end at the crest of a cliff; a hill or ridge with one face steep and the opposite face gently sloping. [Southwestern U. S.]

prey or other large bird that builds in a lofty place; aerie. The eagle and the stork On cliffs and cedar tops their eyries build. Milton.

a European swallow (Hirrundo ariel) that builds flask-shaped nests of mud on overhanging cliffs. -- Fairy rings or circles, the circles formed in grassy lawns by certain fungi (as Marasmius Oreades), formerly supposed to be caused by fairies in their midnight dances. -- Fairy shrimp (Zoöl.), a European fresh-water p…