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To reach out; to extend; to put forth. And stretch forth his neck long and small. Chaucer. I in conquest stretched mine arm. Shak.

One who, or that which, stretches.

from Stretch, v. Stretching course (Masonry), a course or series of stretchers. See Stretcher, 2. Britton.

Stretched beyond ordinary limits.

Stretched beyond ordinary limits.

To stretch out. Milton.

he wounded as soon as possible. Often used adjectively; as, an ambulance wagon; ambulance stretcher; ambulance corps.

The application of the principles of anatomy, as in art. The stretched and vivid anatomism of their [i. e., the French] great figure painters. The London Spectator.

With one leg on each side, as a man when on horseback; with the legs stretched wide apart; astraddle. Placed astride upon the bars of the palisade. Sir W. Scott. Glasses with horn bows sat astride on his nose. Longfellow.

the Cheiroptera, an order of flying mammals, in which the wings are formed by a membrane stretched between the elongated fingers, legs, and tail. The common bats are small and insectivorous. See Cheiroptera and Vampire. Bat tick (Zoöl.), a wingless, dipterous insect of the genus Nycteribia, parasitic on bats.…

rizontal timbers of a building or ship. The beams of a vessel are strong pieces of timber stretching across from side to side to support the decks. Totten.

A conformation like a bench; a long stretch of flat ground, or a kind of natural terrace, near a lake or river. Bench mark (Leveling), one of a number of marks along a line of survey, affixed to permanent objects, to show where leveling staffs were placed. -- Bench of bishops, the whole body of English prelates assemb…

A portable boat made of skins stretched on a frame. [Alaska] The Century.

The stretch which a ship makes in one tack.

and the next course of bricks with their lengths parallel to the face of the wall, called stretchers; Flemish bond (Fig.2), where each course consists of headers and stretchers alternately, so laid as always to break joints; Cross bond, which differs from the English by the change of the second stretcher line so that i…

A line of connected floating timbers stretched across a river, or inclosing an area of water, to keep saw logs, etc., from floating away. Boom iron, one of the iron rings on the yards through which the studding-sail booms traverse. -- The booms, that space on the upper deck of a ship between the foremast and mainmast,…

An instrument to stretch and widen the leg of a boot, consisting of two pieces, together shaped like a leg, between which, when put into the boot, a wedge is driven. The pretty boots trimly stretched on boottrees. Thackeray.

An appliance consisting of an elastic rod, with a number of horse hairs stretched from end to end of it, used in playing on a stringed instrument.

A stock at each end of a seine to keep it stretched.

the person to be rescued, is hung by short ropes from a block which runs upon the hawser stretched from the ship to the shore, and is drawn to land by hauling lines. -- Breeches pipe, a forked pipe forming two branches united at one end. -- Knee breeches, breeches coming to the knee, and buckled or fastened there; s…