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Soft, and full of cavities; of an open, loose, pliable texture; as, a spongy excrescence; spongy earth; spongy cake; spongy bones.

A spongy, combustible substance, prepared from fungus (Boletus and Polyporus) which grows on old trees; German tinder; punk. It has been employed as a styptic by surgeons, but its common use is as tinder, for which purpose it is prepared by soaking it in a strong solution of niter. Ure.

Readily imbibing fluids or moisture; spongy; as, bibulous blotting paper.

A quagmire filled with decayed moss and other vegetable matter; wet spongy ground where a heavy body is apt to sink; a marsh; a morass. Appalled with thoughts of bog, or caverned pit, Of treacherous earth, subsiding where they tread. R. Jago.

Open or spongy, as some porous bones.

Having a spongy or porous stracture; made up of cancelli; cancellated; as, the cancellous texture of parts of many bones.

The light spongy pulp of the fruit of the bitter cucumber (Citrullus, or Cucumis, colocynthis), an Asiatic plant allied to the watermelon; coloquintida. It comes in white balls, is intensely bitter, and a powerful cathartic. Called also bitter apple, bitter cucumber, bitter gourd.

Capable of being pressed together or forced into a narrower compass, as an elastic or spongy substance.

A kind of large. thin muffin or cake, light and spongy, and cooked on a griddle or spider.

The soft, spongy, or cancellated substance between the plates of the skull.

The soft, spongy wood of a species of Magnolia (M. Umbrella).

Spongy; soft; fat and puffy. [Scot.]

Like a fungus; fungous; spongy.

Of the nature of fungi; spongy.

A spongy, morbid growth or granulation in animal bodies, as the proud flesh of wounds. Hoblyn.

loose; slack; as, a lax bandage; lax fiber. The flesh of that sort of fish being lax and spongy. Ray.

obtained from the bulbs of the dahlia, the artichoke, and other sources, as a colorless, spongy, amorphous material. It is so called because by decomposition it yields levulose. [Written also lævulin.]

Filled with spongy pith; pithy. Medullary groove (Anat.), a groove, in the epiblast of the vertebrate blastoderm, the edges of which unite, making a tube (the medullary canal) from which the brain and spinal cord are developed. -- Medullary rays (Bot.), the rays of cellular tissue seen in a transverse section of exoge…

Deep mud; wet, spongy earth. Chaucer. He his rider from the lofty steed Would have cast down and trod in dirty mire. Spenser. Mire crow (Zoöl.), the pewit, or laughing gull. [Prov. Eng.] -- Mire drum, the European bittern. [Prov. Eng.]

wdery variety of calcite, occurring as an efflorescence. -- Mountain milk (Min.), a soft spongy variety of carbonate of lime. -- Mountain mint. (Bot.) See Mint. -- Mountain ousel (Zoöl.), the ring ousel; -- called also mountain thrush and mountain colley. See Ousel. -- Mountain pride, or Mountain green (Bot.), a tr…