n. large fishing net made to hang vertically in the water by weights at the lower edge and floats at the top
E.g. Megan Peters, a trooper's spokeswoman, told the Juneau Empire the party was in possession of 148 sockeye salmon taken with a beach seine net.
a. of or pertaining to old age
E.g. This old lady tried to hide her senile weakness.
a. physical rather than spiritual or intellectual; affecting any of senses or sense organ; sensory
E.g. His hand slid from the back of her neck to circle the base of her throat, and her pulse leaped as her breasts tightened in sensual hunger.
a. of the seventh degree or order; act of causing to rot; causing sepsis or putrefaction
E.g. With your luck you'll get stuck behind a propane truck, or even worse a septic truck, the entire way up the hill.
v. cut off from a whole; set or keep apart; divide or separate
E.g. The result of England's last great colonial struggle with France was to sever from the latter all her American dependencies, her colonists becoming the subjects of alien and rival powers.
n. act of severing, or state of being severed; partition; separation.
E.g. If dismissed without cause, an employee is entitled to certain severance benefits.
n. wreck; scene or condition of complete disorder or ruin
E.g. With the private sector in shambles, the Federal government is the only one with enough juice left to fix anything.
n. square or oblong cloth of wool, cotton, silk, or other textile or netted fabric, used, especially by women, as a loose covering for the neck and shoulders
E.g. I folded my shawl double, and spread it over me for a coverlet; a low, mossy swell was my pillow.
v. shine with a weak or fitful light; glimmer intermittently
E.g. This rope is woven with a maximum amount of reflective tracers--which will make it shimmer in the night.
a. clever; characterized by keen awareness, sharp intelligence
E.g. As a music executive and a businessman, he's in shrewd, wildly successful and not shy about it.
a. acute; sharp; piercing; having or emitting a sharp, piercing tone or sound
E.g. Imagine her surprise, when the White Rabbit read out, at the top of his shrill little voice, the name "Alice!"
v. draw up or contract the shoulders, especially by way of expressing dislike, dread, doubt, or the like
E.g. I really admire the way she is able to shrug off unfair criticism.
v. disorder; move back and forth; mix so as to make a random order or arrangement
E.g. He will shuffle his funds among different accounts in various countries.
v. go or move with one side foremost; move sidewise
E.g. The cat kept running to sidle through a crowd or narrow opening quickly.
n. seat, especially a royal seat; throne; rank; grade; sitting before a fortified place; surrounding or investing of a place by army
E.g. To me the most alarming feature of the siege is short rations.
a. like an ape or monkey
E.g. Lemurs are nocturnal mammals and have many simian characteristics, although they are less intelligent than monkeys.
a. suspicious; mistrustful; marked by or given to doubt
E.g. We understood why you are in a skeptical attitude before watching these pictures.
n. short, usually comic dramatic performance or work
E.g. Not every skit is funny, but overall I enjoy the program.
n. block consisting of a thick piece of something
E.g. As hundreds of people watched from the river-bank, a crane slowly lowered the final stone slab into place, bringing together the two sides of the single arched bridge - an emotional moment for many of those present.
n. one who shirks work or responsibility; one who tries to evade military service in wartime
E.g. At the time of the Civil War your grandpa was what we call a slacker in these days.
n. residue by smelting metal ore; dross; waste material from a coal mine; scum that forms on the surface of molten metal
E.g. In English, slag is the mostly contaminated waste product of the iron- and steel-making process that would be inimical to agriculture.
v. be turned or inclined from a right line or level; lie obliquely; slope; turn from a direct line
E.g. The handwritings of most languages slant to the right.
n. long heavy hammer, often wielded with both hands, used for driving wedges and posts and for other heavy work
E.g. In March 1997, a Maori protester used a sledgehammer to smash the America's Cup in its display case.
v. rotate or turn something about its axis; veer a vehicle; pivot
E.g. The captain could not slew the ship round in time to avoid an accident.
v. creep away meanly; steal away; sneak.
E.g. And then I can paddle over to town nights, and slink around and pick up things I want.
v. glide or slide like reptile; slip and slide, as on a loose or uneven surface
E.g. Occasional drops of rain slither through the silvery mist, and the white stones of the buildings and roads of Cyad are gray with moisture.
v. cut or divide into long, thin pieces, or into very small pieces; cut or rend lengthwise; slit
E.g. Don't forget to sliver wood before cooking.
n. laziness; apathy and inactivity in the practice of virtue; any of several slow-moving arboreal mammals
E.g. The sloth is at its busiest at sunset, using the word busy here in a most relaxed sense.
a. lazy; with little movement; very slow
E.g. Technological advance is also a major factor in sluggish wage growth in the United States.
n. sudden falling off or decline, as in activity, prices, or business; gross amount; mass
E.g. The slump on Wall Street set up a chain reaction in stock markets around the world.
a. unpleasantly and excessively suave or ingratiating in manner or speech
E.g. Am I the only one who sees Robert Gibbs as a nasty, useless, smarmy dolt?
n. smile expressing scorn instead of pleasure; smile in affected, often offensively self-satisfied manner
E.g. A smirk is really a terrible habit for any politician.
v. conceal or hide; envelop completely; extinguish; deprive of the oxygen necessary for combustion
E.g. They try to smother fires as soon as possible.
v. import or export without paying customs duties
E.g. She wanted to smuggle cigarettes across the border.
n. trap; gin; anything by which one is entangled and brought into trouble
E.g. He fell into a snare laid by his enemy.
a. tricky; deceptive; contemptible
E.g. I decide to fire that snide lawyer; he cheated us in previous cases.
n. small cut made with scissors or shears; small piece cut or clipped off
E.g. Here's a snip from a NASA article about the project.
a. elite; high-class or exclusive; overly conceited or arrogant; inclined to turn up one's nose
E.g. Some commentators at the time thought Charteris had been a bit snooty in voicing, but who can now argue that he was wrong?
n. a small secluded room; well and tightly constructed
E.g. Now and then they came upon snug nooks carpeted with grass and jeweled with flowers.
v. move one way and the other so as to get a close place; lie close for comfort; cuddle; nestle
E.g. Anyone who passes up the opportunity to snuggle a giant fuzzy animal is clearly a fool.