Spike Spike noun [ Akin to LG. spiker , spieker , a large nail, Dutch spijker , Swedish spik , Danish spiger , Icelandic spīk ; all perhaps from Latin spica a point, an ear of grain; but in the sense of nail more likely akin to English spoke of a wheel. Confer Spine .] 1. A sort of very large nail; also, a piece of pointed iron set with points upward or outward.

2. Anything resembling such a nail in shape.

He wears on his head the corona radiata . . . ; the spikes that shoot out represent the rays of the sun.

Addison.

3. An ear of corn or grain.

4. (Botany) A kind of flower cluster in which sessile flowers are arranged on an unbranched elongated axis.

Spike grass (Botany) , either of two tall perennial American grasses ( Uniola paniculata , and U. latifolia ) having broad leaves and large flattened spikelets. -- Spike rush . (Botany) See under Rush . -- Spike shell (Zoology) , any pteropod of the genus Styliola having a slender conical shell. -- Spike team , three horses, or a horse and a yoke of oxen, harnessed together, a horse leading the oxen or the span. [ U.S.]

Spike Spike transitive verb [ imperfect & past participle Spiked ; present participle & verbal noun Spiking .] 1. To fasten with spikes, or long, large nails; as, to spike down planks.

2. To set or furnish with spikes.

3. To fix on a spike. [ R.] Young.

4. To stop the vent of (a gun or cannon) by driving a spike nail, or the like into it.

Spike Spike noun [ Confer German spieke , Latin spica an ear of grain. See Spikenard .] (Botany) Spike lavender. See Lavender .

Oil of spike (Chemistry) , a colorless or yellowish aromatic oil extracted from the European broad-leaved lavender, or aspic ( Lavendula Spica ), used in artist's varnish and in veterinary medicine. It is often adulterated with oil of turpentine, which it much resembles.

Spikebill Spike"bill` noun (Zoology) (a) The hooded merganser. (b) The marbled godwit ( Limosa fedoa ).

Spiked Spiked adjective Furnished or set with spikes, as corn; fastened with spikes; stopped with spikes.

A youth, leaping over the spiked pales, . . . was caught by those spikes.

Wiseman.

Spikefish Spike"fish` noun (Zoology) See Sailfish (a)

Spikelet Spike"let noun (Botany) A small or secondary spike; especially, one of the ultimate parts of the in florescence of grasses. See Illust. of Quaking grass .

Spikenard Spike"nard noun [ For spiked nard ; confer German spieknarde , New Latin spica nardi . See Spike an ear, and Nard .] 1. (Botany) An aromatic plant. In the United States it is the Aralia racemosa , often called spignet , and used as a medicine. The spikenard of the ancients is the Nardostachys Jatamansi , a native of the Himalayan region. From its blackish roots a perfume for the hair is still prepared in India.

2. A fragrant essential oil, as that from the Nardostachys Jatamansi .

Spiketail Spike"tail` noun (Zoology) The pintail duck. [ Local, U.S.]

Spiky Spik"y adjective 1. Like a spike; spikelike.

These spiky , vivid outbursts of metallic vapors.

C. A. Young.

2. Having a sharp point, or sharp points; furnished or armed with spikes.

Or by the spiky harrow cleared away.

Dyer.

The spiky wheels through heaps of carnage tore.

Pope.

Spile Spile noun [ Confer LG. spile , dial. German speil , speiler , Dutch spijl . √170.] 1. A small plug or wooden pin, used to stop a vent, as in a cask.

2. A small tube or spout inserted in a tree for conducting sap, as from a sugar maple.

3. A large stake driven into the ground as a support for some superstructure; a pile.

Spile hole , a small air hole in a cask; a vent.

Spile Spile transitive verb To supply with a spile or a spigot; to make a small vent in, as a cask.

Spilikin Spil"i·kin noun [ OD. spelleken a small pin. See Spill a splinter.] One of a number of small pieces or pegs of wood, ivory, bone, or other material, for playing a game, or for counting the score in a game, as in cribbage. In the plural ( spilikins ), a game played with such pieces; pushpin. [ Written also spillikin , spilliken .]

Spill Spill noun [ √170. Confer Spell a splinter.] 1. A bit of wood split off; a splinter. [ Obsolete or Prov. Eng.]

2. A slender piece of anything. Specifically: --

(a) A peg or pin for plugging a hole, as in a cask; a spile.

(b) A metallic rod or pin.

(c) A small roll of paper, or slip of wood, used as a lamplighter, etc.

(d) (Mining) One of the thick laths or poles driven horizontally ahead of the main timbering in advancing a level in loose ground.

3. A little sum of money. [ Obsolete] Ayliffe.

Spill Spill transitive verb [ imperfect & past participle Spilt ; present participle & verbal noun Spilling .] To cover or decorate with slender pieces of wood, metal, ivory, etc.; to inlay. [ Obsolete] Spenser.

Spill Spill transitive verb [ imperfect & past participle Spilled , or Spilt ; present participle & verbal noun Spilling .] [ Middle English spillen ,sually, to destroy, Anglo-Saxon spillan , spildan , to destroy; akin to Icelandic spilla to destroy, Swedish spilla to spill, Danish spilde ,G. & Dutch spillen to squander, Old High German spildan .] 1. To destroy; to kill; to put an end to. [ Obsolete]

And gave him to the queen, all at her will
To choose whether she would him save or spill .

Chaucer.

Greater glory think [ it] to save than spill .

Spenser.

2. To mar; to injure; to deface; hence, to destroy by misuse; to waste. [ Obsolete]

They [ the colors] disfigure the stuff and spill the whole workmanship.

Puttenham.

Spill not the morning, the quintessence of day, in recreations.

Fuller.

3. To suffer to fall or run out of a vessel; to lose, or suffer to be scattered; -- applied to fluids and to substances whose particles are small and loose; as, to spill water from a pail; to spill quicksilver from a vessel; to spill powder from a paper; to spill sand or flour.

» Spill differs from pour in expressing accidental loss, -- a loss or waste contrary to purpose.

4. To cause to flow out and be lost or wasted; to shed, or suffer to be shed, as in battle or in manslaughter; as, a man spills another's blood, or his own blood.

And to revenge his blood so justly spilt .

Dryden.

5. (Nautical) To relieve a sail from the pressure of the wind, so that it can be more easily reefed or furled, or to lessen the strain.

Spilling line (Nautical) , a rope used for spilling, or dislodging, the wind from the belly of a sail. Totten.

Spill Spill intransitive verb 1. To be destroyed, ruined, or wasted; to come to ruin; to perish; to waste. [ Obsolete]

That thou wilt suffer innocents to spill .

Chaucer.

2. To be shed; to run over; to fall out, and be lost or wasted. "He was so topful of himself, that he let it spill on all the company." I. Watts.

Spiller Spill"er noun 1. One who, or that which, spills.

2. A kind of fishing line with many hooks; a boulter.

Spillet fishing, Spilliard fishing Spil"let fish`ing, Spil"liard fish`ing A system or method of fishing by means of a number of hooks set on snoods all on one line; -- in North America, called trawl fishing , bultow , or bultow fishing , and long-line fishing .

Spillikin Spil"li·kin noun See Spilikin .

Spillway Spill"way` noun A sluiceway or passage for superfluous water in a reservoir, to prevent too great pressure on the dam.

Spilt Spilt imperfect & past participle of Spill . Spilled.

Spilter Spil"ter noun [ From Spill , noun ] Any one of the small branches on a stag's head. [ Obsolete] Howell.

Spilth Spilth noun [ From Spill .] Anything spilt, or freely poured out; slop; effusion. [ Archaic] "With drunken spilth of wine." Shak.

Choicest cates, and the flagon's best spilth .

R. Browning.

Spin Spin transitive verb [ imperfect & past participle Spun (Archaic imperfect Span ); present participle & verbal noun Spinning .] [ Anglo-Saxon spinnan ; akin to D. & German spinnen , Icelandic & Swedish spinna , Danish spinde , Goth. spinnan , and probably to English span . √170. Confer Span , transitive verb , Spider .] 1. To draw out, and twist into threads, either by the hand or machinery; as, to spin wool, cotton, or flax; to spin goat's hair; to produce by drawing out and twisting a fibrous material.

All the yarn she [ Penelope] spun in Ulysses' absence did but fill Ithaca full of moths.

Shak.

2. To draw out tediously; to form by a slow process, or by degrees; to extend to a great length; -- with out ; as, to spin out large volumes on a subject.

Do you mean that story is tediously spun out?

Sheridan.

3. To protract; to spend by delays; as, to spin out the day in idleness.

By one delay after another they spin out their whole lives.

L'Estrange.

4. To cause to turn round rapidly; to whirl; to twirl; as, to spin a top.

5. To form (a web, a cocoon, silk, or the like) from threads produced by the extrusion of a viscid, transparent liquid, which hardens on coming into contact with the air; -- said of the spider, the silkworm, etc.

6. (Mech.) To shape, as malleable sheet metal, into a hollow form, by bending or buckling it by pressing against it with a smooth hand tool or roller while the metal revolves, as in a lathe.

To spin a yarn (Nautical) , to tell a story, esp. a long or fabulous tale. -- To spin hay (Mil.) , to twist it into ropes for convenient carriage on an expedition. -- To spin street yarn , to gad about gossiping. [ Collog.]

Spin Spin intransitive verb 1. To practice spinning; to work at drawing and twisting threads; to make yarn or thread from fiber; as, the woman knows how to spin ; a machine or jenny spins with great exactness.

They neither know to spin , nor care to toll.

Prior.

2. To move round rapidly; to whirl; to revolve, as a top or a spindle, about its axis.

Round about him spun the landscape,
Sky and forest reeled together.

Longfellow.

With a whirligig of jubilant mosquitoes spinning about each head.

G. W. Cable.

3. To stream or issue in a thread or a small current or jet; as, blood spins from a vein. Shak.

4. To move swifty; as, to spin along the road in a carriage, on a bicycle, etc. [ Colloq.]

Spin Spin noun 1. The act of spinning; as, the spin of a top; a spin a bicycle. [ Colloq.]

2. (Kinematics) Velocity of rotation about some specified axis.

Spina bifida Spi"na bif"i·da (Medicine) [ Latin , cleft spine.] A congenital malformation in which the spinal column is cleft at its lower portion, and the membranes of the spinal cord project as an elastic swelling from the gap thus formed.

Spinaceous Spi·na"ceous adjective (Botany) Of, pertaining to, or resembling, the plant spinach, or the family of plants to which it belongs.

Spinach, Spinage Spin"ach, Spin"age noun [ Old French espinache , espinoche , French épinard ; confer French spinace , Spanish espinaca ; all from Arabic isfānāj , isfināj , aspanākh , probably of Persian origin.] (Botany) A common pot herb ( Spinacia oleracea ) belonging to the Goosefoot family.

Mountain spinach . See Garden orache , under Orache . -- New Zealand spinach (Botany) , a coarse herb ( Tetragonia expansa ), a poor substitute for spinach.

» Various other pot herbs are locally called spinach .

Spinal Spi"nal adjective [ Latin spinalis , from spina the spine: confer French spinal . See Spine .] 1. (Anat.) Of, pertaining to, or in the region of, the backbone, or vertebral column; rachidian; vertebral.

2. Of or pertaining to a spine or spines.

Spinal accessory nerves , the eleventh pair of cranial nerves in the higher vertebrates. They originate from the spinal cord and pass forward into the skull, from which they emerge in company with the pneumogastrics. -- Spinal column , the backbone, or connected series or vertebrĉ which forms the axis of the vertebrate skeleton; the spine; rachis; vertebral column. -- Spinal cord , the great nervous cord extending backward from the brain along the dorsal side of the spinal column of a vertebrate animal, and usually terminating in a threadlike appendage called the filum terminale ; the spinal, or vertebral, marrow; the myelon. The nervous tissue consists of nerve fibers and nerve cells, the latter being confined to the so-called gray matter of the central portions of the cord, while the peripheral white matter is composed of nerve fibers only. The center of the cord is traversed by a slender canal connecting with the ventricles of the brain.

Spinate Spi"nate adjective Bearing a spine; spiniform.

Spindle Spin"dle noun [ Anglo-Saxon spinal , from spinnan to spin; akin to Dutch spil , German spille , spindel , Old High German spinnala . √170. See Spin .] 1. The long, round, slender rod or pin in spinning wheels by which the thread is twisted, and on which, when twisted, it is wound; also, the pin on which the bobbin is held in a spinning machine, or in the shuttle of a loom.

2. A slender rod or pin on which anything turns; an axis; as, the spindle of a vane. Specifically: --

(a) (Machinery) The shaft, mandrel, or arbor, in a machine tool, as a lathe or drilling machine, etc., which causes the work to revolve, or carries a tool or center, etc.

(b) (Machinery) The vertical rod on which the runner of a grinding mill turns.

(c) (Founding) A shaft or pipe on which a core of sand is formed.

3. The fusee of a watch.

4. A long and slender stalk resembling a spindle.

5. A yarn measure containing, in cotton yarn, 15,120 yards; in linen yarn, 14,400 yards.

6. (Geom.) A solid generated by the revolution of a curved line about its base or double ordinate or chord.

7. (Zoology) (a) Any marine univalve shell of the genus Rostellaria ; -- called also spindle stromb . (b) Any marine gastropod of the genus Fusus .

Dead spindle (Machinery) , a spindle in a machine tool that does not revolve; the spindle of the tailstock of a lathe. -- Live spindle (Machinery) , the revolving spindle of a machine tool; the spindle of the headstock of a turning lathe. -- Spindle shell . (Zoology) See Spindle , 7. above. -- Spindle side , the female side in descent; in the female line; opposed to spear side . Ld. Lytton. [ R.] "King Lycaon, grandson, by the spindle side , of Oceanus." Lowell. -- Spindle tree (Botany) , any shrub or tree of the genus Eunymus . The wood of E. Europĉus was used for spindles and skewers. See Prickwood .

Spindle Spin"dle intransitive verb [ imperfect & past participle Spindled; present participle & verbal noun Spindling .] To shoot or grow into a long, slender stalk or body; to become disproportionately tall and slender.

It has begun to spindle into overintellectuality.

Lowell.

Spindle-legged Spin"dle-legged` adjective Having long, slender legs.

Spindle-shanked Spin"dle-shanked` adjective Having long, slender legs. Addison.

Spindle-shaped Spin"dle-shaped` adjective 1. Having the shape of a spindle.

2. (Botany) Thickest in the middle, and tapering to both ends; fusiform; -- applied chiefly to roots.

Spindlelegs Spin"dle·legs` noun A spindleshanks.

Spindleshanks Spin"dle·shanks` noun A person with slender shanks, or legs; -- used humorously or in contempt.

Spindletail Spin"dle·tail` noun (Zoology) The pintail duck. [ Local, U.S.]

Spindleworm Spin"dle·worm` noun (Zoology) The larva of a noctuid mmoth ( Achatodes zeĉ ) which feeds inside the stalks of corn (maize), sometimes causing much damage. It is smooth, with a black head and tail and a row of black dots across each segment.

Spindling Spin"dling adjective Long and slender, or disproportionately tall and slender; as, a spindling tree; a spindling boy.

Spindrift Spin"drift noun Same as Spoondrift .

The ocean waves are broken up by wind, ultimately producing the storm wrack and spindrift of the tempest-tossed sea.

J. E. Marr.

Spine Spine noun [ Latin spina thorn, the spine; akin to spica a point: confer Old French espine , French épine . Confer Spike , Spinet a musical instrument, Spinny .] 1. (Botany) A sharp appendage to any of a plant; a thorn.

2. (Zoology) (a) A rigid and sharp projection upon any part of an animal. (b) One of the rigid and undivided fin rays of a fish.

3. (Anat.) The backbone, or spinal column, of an animal; -- so called from the projecting processes upon the vertebrĉ.

4. Anything resembling the spine or backbone; a ridge.

Spine-finned Spine"-finned` adjective (Zoology) Having fine supported by spinous fin rays; -- said of certain fishes.

Spine-tailed Spine"-tailed adjective (Zoology) Having the tail quills ending in sharp, naked tips.

Spine-tailed swift . (Zoology) See Spinetail (a) .

Spineback Spine"back` noun (Zoology) A fish having spines in, or in front of, the dorsal fins.

Spinebill Spine"bill` noun (Zoology) Any species of Australian birds of the genus Acanthorhynchus . They are related to the honey eaters.

Spined Spined adjective Furnished with spines; spiny.

Spinel Spin"el noun Bleached yarn in making the linen tape called inkle ; unwrought inkle. Knight.

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