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Webster’s Dictionary (1828)

98,828 entries. Headwords are matched first, then definition text.

57 words match “CRESCENT”

CRESCENT n. 12 definitions

Anything having the shape of a crescent or new moon.

Crescent-shaped. "Crescentic lobes." R. Owen.

CRESCENTWISE adv.

In the form of a crescent; like a crescent. Tennyson.

ACCRESCENT a. 2 definitions

Growing; increasing. Shuckford.

BICRESCENTIC a.

Having the form of a double crescent.

DECRESCENT a. 2 definitions

Becoming less by gradual diminution; decreasing; as, a decrescent moon.

EQUICRESCENT a.

Increasing by equal increments; as, an equicrescent variable.

out in an abnormal or morbid manner or as a superfluity. Expunge the whole, or lip the excrescent parts. Pope. Excrescent letter (Philol.), a letter which has been added to a root; as, the d in alder (AS. alr) is an excrescent letter.

EXCRESCENTIAL a.

Pertaining to, or resembling, an excrescence. [R.] Hawthorne.

INCRESCENT a. 2 definitions

Increasing; growing; augmenting; swelling; enlarging. Between the incresent and decrescent moon. Tennyson.

SUPERCRESCENT a.

Growing on some other growing thing. [R.] Johnson.

BAILY'S BEADS n.

total eclipses of the sun. Just before and after a total eclipse, the slender, unobscured crescent of the sun's disk appears momentarily like a row of bright spots resembling a string of beads. The phenomenon (first fully described by Francis Baily, 1774 -- 1844) is thought to be an effect of irradiation, and of inequa…

To furnish with benches. 'T was benched with turf. Dryden. Stately theaters benched crescentwise. Tennyson.

BICORN; BICORNED; BICORNOUS a.

Having two horns; two-horned; crescentlike.

the dry shell of a calabash or gourd. Calabash tree. (Bot.), a tree of tropical America (Crescentia cujete), producing a large gourdike fruit, containing a purgative pulp. Its hard shell, after the removal of the pulp, is used for cups, bottles, etc. The African calabash tree is the baobab.

CONCAVO-CONVEX a.

Concave on one side and convex on the other, as an eggshell or a crescent.

Terminated with crescent; -- said of a cross the ends of which are so terminated.

or preserving from evil, is very old. Schaff-Herzog Encyc. Before the cross has waned the crescent's ray. Sir W. Scott. Tis where the cross is preached. Cowper.

The point or horn of the crescent moon or other crescent-shaped luminary.

A crescentic mass of granular protoplasm present in the salivary glands.