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a turning or curving; flexion; hence, obsequious bowing or bending. Will it give place to flexure and low bending Shak.

A bending or turning aside; deflection. Bailey.

An inflection; a bend or fold. [R.] Sir T. Browne.

The state of being curved, crooked, or inclined from a straight line; flexure; curvity; as, the bent of a bow. [Obs.] Wilkins.

A flexure; a bend; a twist; a turn; a coil, as in a rope; as the boughts of a serpent. [Obs.] Spenser. The boughts of the fore legs. Sir T. Browne.

The hollow at the flexure of the arm.

A bend, turn, or curve; curvature; flexure. Through lanes, and crooks, and darkness. Phaer.

An undulating or waving line or streak in any substance, as wood, glass, etc.; flexure; sinuosity. If the glass of the prisms . . . be without those numberless waves or curls which usually arise from the sand holes. Sir I. Newton.

A bending without angles; that wcich is bent; a flexure; as, a curve in a railway or canal.

Having turns, windings, or flexures.

Of, pertaining to, or resulting from, flexure; of the nature of, or characterized by, flexure; as, flexural elasticity.

An upward bend or flexure of a considerable portion of the earth's crust, resulting in the formation of a class of mountain elevations called anticlinoria; -- opposed to geosynclinal.

aracterized by the minuteness and close arrangement of the tubes, as also by their double flexure. It is used in manufacturing articles of ornament or utility.

Of or pertaining to, or in the region of, the middle of the head; as, the mesocephalic flexure.

The act of recurving, or the state of being recurved; a bending or flexure backward.

g (Shafting), a bearing which is supported in such a manner that it may tip to accomodate flexure or displacement of the shaft.

Curved in two directions, like the letter S, or the Greek s. Sigmoid flexure (Anat.), the last curve of the colon before it terminates in the rectum. See Illust. under Digestive. -- Sigmoid valves. (Anat.) See Semilunar valves, under Semilunar.

The act of twisting; a contortion; a flexure; a convolution; a bending. Not the least turn or twist in the fibers of any one animal which does not render them more proper for that particular animal's way of life than any other cast or texture. Addison.

To free from flexure; to make, or allow to become, straight; to loosen; as, to unbend a bow.

Not bending; not suffering flexure; not yielding to pressure; stiff; -- applied to material things. Flies o'er unbending corn, and skims along the main. Pope.