Search the Dictionary

ous, offensive, or obstructive; filthy; dirty; not clean; polluted; nasty; defiled; as, a foul cloth; foul hands; a foul chimney; foul air; a ship's bottom is foul when overgrown with barnacles; a gun becomes foul from repeated firing; a well is foul with polluted water. My face is foul with weeping. Job. xvi. 16.…

Using language scurrilous, opprobrious, obscene, or profane; abusive. So foul-mouthed a witness never appeared in any cause. Addison.

Using profane, scurrilous, slanderous, or obscene language. Shak.

A thin, washable material of silk, or silk and cotton, originally imported from India, but now also made elsewhere.

To flash, as lightning; to lighten; to gleam; to thunder. [Obs.] "Flames of fouldering heat." Spenser.

Foully. [Obs.] Chaucer.

In a foul manner; filthily; nastily; shamefully; unfairly; dishonorably. I foully wronged him; do forgive me, do. Gay.

The quality or condition of being foul.

In collision; entangled. Totten. To run afoul of, to run against or come into collision with, especially so as to become entangled or to cause injury.

To make foul; to soil.

To make foul; to defile. [Obs.] Wyclif.

Mixed with, or emitting, lightning. [Obs.] "With foul enfouldred smoke." Spenser.

Alongside; as, close aboard. Naut.: To fall aboard of, to strike a ship's side; to fall foul of. -- To haul the tacks aboard, to set the courses. -- To keep the land aboard, to hug the shore. -- To lay (a ship) aboard, to place one's own ship close alongside of (a ship) for fighting.

To startle from quiet; to alarm. Smale foules a great heap That had afrayed [affrayed] me out of my sleep. Chaucer.

Full off dregs; foul. [R.] Knowles.

he arms. -- The anchor comes home, when it drags over the bottom as the ship drifts. -- Foul anchor, the anchor when it hooks, or is entangled with, another anchor, or with a cable or wreck, or when the slack cable entangled. -- The anchor is acockbill, when it is suspended perpendicularly from the cathead, ready to…

the understanding; plain; evident; obvious; known; palpable; indubitable. It is apparent foul play. Shak.

To bespatter with foul reports or false and injurious charges; to tarnish in point of reputation or good name; to slander or calumniate; as, to asperse a poet or his writings; to asperse a man's character. With blackest crimes aspersed. Cowper.

iations reports or charges which tarnish reputation, like the bespattering of a body with foul water; calumny. Every candid critic would be ashamed to cast wholesale aspersions on the entire body of professional teachers. Grote. Who would by base aspersions blot thy virtue. Dryden.

er up or conceal one's thoughts or actions; open to view; exposed. Bare in thy guilt, how foul must thou appear ! Milton.