Word Meanings - NAIL - Book Publishers vocabulary database

the horny scale of plate of epidermis at the end of the fingers and toes of man and many apes. His nayles like a briddes claws were. Chaucer. Note: The nails are strictly homologous with hoofs and claws. When compressed, curved, and pointed, they

Additional info about word: NAIL

the horny scale of plate of epidermis at the end of the fingers and toes of man and many apes. His nayles like a briddes claws were. Chaucer. Note: The nails are strictly homologous with hoofs and claws. When compressed, curved, and pointed, they are called talons or claws, and the animal bearing them is said to be unguiculate; when they incase the extremities of the digits they are called hoofs, and the animal is ungulate. The basal thickened portion of the anterior wings of certain hemiptera. The terminal horny plate on the beak of ducks, and other allied birds. 3. A slender, pointed piece of metal, usually with a head, used for fastening pieces of wood or other material together, by being driven into or through them. Note: The different sorts of nails are named either from the use to which they are applied, from their shape, from their size, or from some other characteristic, as shingle, floor, ship-carpenters', and horseshoe nails, roseheads, diamonds, fourpenny, tenpenny (see Penny), chiselpointed, cut, wrought, or wire nails, etc. 4. A measure of length, being two inches and a quarter, or the sixteenth of a yard. Nail ball , a round projectile with an iron bolt protruding to prevent it from turning in the gun. -- Nail plate, iron in plates from which cut nails are made. -- On the nail, in hand; on the spot; immediately; without delay or time of credit; as, to pay money on the nail. "You shall have ten thousand pounds on the nail." Beaconsfield. -- To hit the nail on the head, to hit most effectively; to do or say a thing in the right way. (more info) Icel. nagl, nail , nagli nail , Sw. nagel nail , Dan. nagle, Goth. ganagljan to nail, Lith. nagas nail , Russ. nogote, L. unguis, Gr. nakha.

Related words: (words related to NAIL)

• PLATEFUL
  Enough to fill a plate; as much as a plate will hold.
• POINT SWITCH
  A switch made up of a rail from each track, both rails being tapered far back and connected to throw alongside the through rail of either track.
• CURVIROSTRES
  A group of passerine birds, including the creepers and nuthatches.
• POINTLESSLY
  Without point.
• POINT-DEVICE; POINT-DEVISE
  Uncommonly nice and exact; precise; particular. You are rather point-devise in your accouterments. Shak. Thus he grew up, in logic point-devise, Perfect in grammar, and in rhetoric nice. Longfellow. (more info) + point point, condition + devis
• CURVICAUDATE
  Having a curved or crooked tail.
• POINTAL
  The pistil of a plant. 2. A kind of pencil or style used with the tablets of the Middle Ages. "A pair of tablets . . . and a pointel." Chaucer.
• SCALEBOARD
  A thin slip of wood used to justify a page. Crabb. 2. A thin veneer of leaf of wood used for covering the surface of articles of firniture, and the like. Scaleboard plane, a plane for cutting from a board a wide shaving forming a scaleboard.
• POINTED
  1. Sharp; having a sharp point; as, a pointed rock. 2. Characterized by sharpness, directness, or pithiness of expression; terse; epigrammatic; especially, directed to a particular person or thing. His moral pleases, not his pointed wit. Pope.
• HORNY-HANDED
  Having the hands horny and callous from labor.
• CURVE
  Bent without angles; crooked; curved; as, a curve line; a curve surface.
• EPIDERMIS
  The outer, nonsensitive layer of the skin; cuticle; scarfskin. See Dermis.
• COMPRESSIVE
  Compressing, or having power or tendency to compress; as, a compressive force.
• CURVISERIAL
  Distributed in a curved line, as leaves along a stem.
• POINT ALPHABET
  An alphabet for the blind with a system of raised points corresponding to letters.
• CURVATURE
  The amount of degree of bending of a mathematical curve, or the tendency at any point to depart from a tangent drawn to the curve at that point. Aberrancy of curvature , the deviation of a curve from a curcular form. -Absolute curvature. See under
• HORNY
  1. Having horns or hornlike projections. Gay. 2. Composed or made of horn, or of a substance resembling horn; of the nature of horn. "The horny . . . coat of the eye." Ray. 3. Hard; callous. "His horny fist." Dryden.
• CURVATE; CURVATED
  Bent in a regular form; curved.
• POINTSMAN
  A man who has charge of railroad points or switches.
• SCALEBEAM
  1. The lever or beam of a balance; the lever of a platform scale, to which the poise for weighing is applied. 2. A weighing apparatus with a sliding weight, resembling a steelyard.
• WET PLATE
  A plate the film of which retains its sensitiveness only while wet. The film used in such plates is of collodion impregnated with bromides and iodides. Before exposure the plate is immersed in a solution of silver nitrate, and immediately after
• GUNTER'S SCALE
  A scale invented by the Rev. Edmund Gunter , a professor of astronomy at Gresham College, London, who invented also Gunter's chain, and Gunter's quadrant. Note: Gunter's scale is a wooden rule, two feet long, on one side of which are marked scales
• COVER-POINT
  The fielder in the games of cricket and lacrosse who supports "point."
• CONTEMPLATE
  contemplate; con- + templum a space for observation marked out by the 1. To look at on all sides or in all its bearings; to view or consider with continued attention; to regard with deliberate care; to meditate on; to study. To love,
• VEILED PLATE
  A fogged plate.
• TRICURVATE
  Curved in three directions; as, a tricurvate spicule (see Illust. of Spicule).
• FOOTPLATE
  See
• INCOMPRESSIBLE
  Not compressible; incapable of being reduced by force or pressure into a smaller compass or volume; resisting compression; as, many liquids and solids appear to be almost incompressible. -- In`com*press"i*ble*ness, n.
• TROIS POINT
  The third point from the outer edge on each player's home table.
• RECURVE
  To curve in an opposite or unusual direction; to bend back or down.
• REAPPOINT
  To appoint again.
• STANDPOINT
  A fixed point or station; a basis or fundamental principle; a position from which objects or principles are viewed, and according to which they are compared and judged.
• INTERPOINT
  To point; to mark with stops or pauses; to punctuate. Her sighs should interpoint her words. Daniel.