A man shall never want crooked paths to walk in, if he thinks that he is in the right way wherever he has the footsteps of others to follow. Locke. Among the crooked lanes, on every hedge, The glow-worm lights 'his gem. Thomson. 3. Perverse; untoward; without rectitude of mind; given to obliquity of conduct. They have corrupted themselves: they are a perverse and crooked generation. Deut. Hence, heap of wrath; foul, indigested lump! As crooked in thy manners as thy shape. Shak. We were not born crooked; we learned those windings and turnings of the serpent. CROOKEDLY. adv. [from crooked.] 1. Not in a straight line. 2. Untowardly; not compliantly. South. If we walk perversely with God, he will walk crookedly towards us. Taylor's Rule of Liv. Holy. CROOKEDNESS. n. s. [from crooked.] 1. Deviation from straightness; curvity; the state of being inflected; inflection. He that knoweth what is straight, doth even thereby discern what is crooked, because the absence of straightness, in bodies capable thereHooker. of, is crookedness. Deformity of a gibbous body. When the heathens offered a sacrifice to their faise gods, they would make a severe search to see if there were any crookedness or spot, any uncleanness or deformity, in their sacrifice. Taylor's Worthy Communicant. CROP. n. s. [cnop, Saxon.] The craw of a bird; the first stomach into which its meat descends. In birds there is no mastication, or comminution of the meat in the mouth; but, in such as are not carnivorous, it is immediately swallowed into the crop or craw. Ray: But fluttering there, they nestle near the And lodge in habitations not their own, CROP, n. s. [cnoppa, Saxon.] 1. The highest part or end of any thing; as, the head of a tree, the ear of corn, 2. The harvest; the corn gathered off a field; the product of the field, And this of all my harvest hope I have, Nought reaped but a weedy crop of care. Spenser. Lab'ring the soil, and reaping plenteous crop, Corn, wine, and oil. Milton's Paradise Lost. The fountain which from Helicon proceeds, That sacred stream, should never water weeds, Nor make the crap of thorns and thistles grow. Roscommon. Nothing is more prejudicial to your crap than mowing of it too soon. Mortimer's Husbandry. 3. Any thing cut off. Guiltless of steel, and from the razor free, It falls a plenteous crop reserv'd for thee. Dryd. To CROP. v. a. [from the noun.] To cut off the ends of any thing; to mow; to reap; to lop. Cropp'd are the flower-de-luces in your arms; Of England's coat, one half is cut away. Shak. He, upon whose side The fewest roses are cropp'd from the tree, engage A hungry foe, and arm'd with sober rage. Tate's Juvenal CRO'SIER. n. s. [croiser, Fr. from croix, a cross.] The pastoral staff of a bishop, which has a cross upon it. When prelates are great, there is also danger from them; as in the times of Anselmus and Thomas Becket, who, with their cresiers, did almost try it with the king's sword. Bacon, Grievances there were, I must confess, and some incongruities, in my civil government; wherein some say the crosier, some say the dis taff, was too busy. Howd Her front erect with majesty she bare, The crosier wielded, and the mitre wore. Dryd CRO'SLET. n. s. [croisselet, French.] I. A small cross. Then Una 'gan to ask, if aught he knew, Or heard abroad, of that her champion true, That in his armour bare a creslet red. Spear, Here an unfinish'd diamond craslet lay, To which soft lovers adoration pay. Gay, 2. It seems to be printed in the following passage, by mistake, for corselet. The creslet some, and some the cuishes mould, CROSS n. s. [croix, Fr. croce, Ital. crux, With silver plated, and with ductile gold. Dryd Latin.] 1. One straight body laid at right angles over another; the instrument by which the Saviour of the world suffered death. They make a little cross of a quili; longways of that part of the quill which hath the pith, and crossways of that piece of the quill without pith. Bacon's Net. Hist, You are first to consider seriously the infinite love of your Saviour, who offered himself for you as a sacrifice upon the cress. Tayler. 2. The ensign of the christian religion. A monument with a cross upon it to excite devotion, such as were anciently set in market places. She doth stray about By holy crosses, where she kneels and prays. A line drawn through another. Wishing unto me many crosses and mis- A great estate hath great crosses, and a mean fortune hath but small ones. Taylor. 3. Money, so called because marked with a cross. He was said to make soldiers spring up out of the very earth, to follow him, though he had not Horvel. a cross to pay them salary. Whereas we cannot much lament our loss, Who neither carried back nor brought one cross. Dryden. 7. Cross and Pile, a play with money, at which it is put to chance whether the side which bears a cross shall lie upward, or the other. Whacum had neither cross nor pile; His plunder was not worth the while. Hudib. This I humbly conceive to be perfect boys play: cross, I win, and pile, you lose; or, what's your's is mine, and what 's mine is my own. Swift. 8. Church lands in Ireland. The absolute palatines made their own judges, so as the king's writ did not run in those counties, but only in the church lands lying within the same, which were called the cross; wherein the king made a sheriff: so in each of these counties palatines there was one sheriff of the liberty, and another of the cross. Sir J. Davies. CROSS. adj. [from the substantive.] 1. Transverse; falling a thwart something else. Whatsoever penumbra should be made in the circles by the cross refraction of the second prism, that penumbra would be conspicuous in the right lines which touch those circles. Newt. The sun, in that space of time, by his annual contrary motion eastward, will be advanced near a degree of the ecliptick, cross to the motion of Holder on Time. the equator. The ships must needs encounter, when they either advance towards one another in direct lines, or meet in the intersection of cross ones. Bentley. 2. Oblique; lateral. 3. Was this a face To stand against the deep dread-bolted thunder, cross, One must be happy by the other's loss. Dryd. the rest of mankind; a difficulty which a modest 4. Perverse; untractable. Atterbury. When, through the cross circumstances of a man's temper or condition, the enjoyment of a pleasure would certainly expose him to a greater inconvenience, then religion bids him quit it. South. 5. Peevish; fretful; ill-humoured. Did ever any man upon the rack afflict himself, because he had received a cross answer Taylor from his mistress? All cross and distasteful humours, and whatever else may render the conversation of men grievous and uneasy to one another, must be Tillotson shunned. 6. Contrary; contradictory. 7. 8. The mind brings all the ends of a long and various hypothesis together; sees how one part coheres with, and depends upon, another; and so clears off all the appearing contrarieties and contradictions, that seemed to lie cross and un couth, and to make the whole unintelligible. South. We learn the great reasonableness of not only I cannot, without some regret, behold the cross Evarchus made a cross marriage also with Dorilaus's sister, and shortly left her with child of Sidney. the famous Pyrocles. Cross marriages, between the king's son and the archduke's daughter; and again, between the archduke's son and the king's daughter. Bacon's Henry VII. A fox was taking a walk one night cross a vilL'Estrange, lage. To CROSS. v. a. [from the noun.] 1. Dryden. This forc'd the stubborn'st for the cause, To cross the cudgels to the laws; That what by breaking them 't had gain'd, By their support might be maintain'd. Hudibras. The loxia, or cross-bill, whose bill is thick and strong, with the tips crossing one another, with great readiness breaks open fir-cones, apples, and other fruit, to come at their kernels; as if the crossing of the bill was designed for this Derbam's Physico-Theology. service. I shall most carefully observe, not to cross over or deface the copy of your papers for the future, and only to mark in the margin. Pope. A hunted hare treads back her mazes, and crosses and confounds her former track. Watts. To sign with the cross. Friars Resort to farmers rich, and bless their halls, And exorcise the beds, and cross the walls. Dry. 3. To cancel; as, to cross an article. 4: To pass over. He conquered this proud Turk as far as the Hellespont; which he crossed, and made a visit to the Greek emperor at Constantinople. Temple. We found the hero; for whose only sake We sought the dark abodes, and cross'd the bitter Dryden. 5. To move laterally, obliquely, or athwart; not in opposition; not in the same line. lake. cross. But he, them spying, 'gan to turn aside, For fear, as seem'd, or for some feined loss; More greedy they of news, fast towards him do Spenser. 6. To thwart; to interpose obstruction; to embarrass; to obstruct; to hinder; to counteract. Still do I cross this wretch, whatso he taketh in hand. Hooker. The king no longer could endure Thus to be cross'd in what he did intend. Daniel. He was so great an enemy to Digby and Colpeper, who were only present in debates of the war with the officers, that he crossed all they proposed. Clarenden. Buried in private, and.so suddenly! It crosses my design, which was t' allow The rites of funeral fitting his degree. Dryden. Swell'd with our late successes on the fee, Which France and Holland wanted pow'r to cross, We urge an unseen fate. Dryden. The firm patriot there, Though still by faction, vice, and fortune, crost, Shall find the generous labour was not lost. Addison's Cato. 7. To counteract; to be inconsistent with. Then their wills clash with their understandings, and their appetites cross their duty, Locke, 8. To contravene; to hinder by authority; to countermand. No governour is suffered to go on with any one course; but upon the least information he is either stopped and crossed, or other courses ap pointed him from hence. Spenser on Ireland. It may make my case dangerous, to cross this in the smallest. Shakspeare. 9. To contradict. In all this there is not a syllable which any ways crosseth us. Hooker. It is certain, howsoever it cross the received opinion, that sounds may be created without Bacon's Nat. Hist. air. 70. To debar; to preclude. From his loins no hopeful branch shall spring, To cross me from the golden time I look for. To CROSS, v. N. 1. To lie athwart another thing. 2. To be inconsistent. Shakspeare. Men's actions do not always cross with reason. Sidney. CROSS-BAR-SHOT. z, s. A round shot, or great bullet, with a bar of iron put :through it. Harris. CROSS-EXAMINE. v. a. [cross and examine. To try the faith of evidence by captious questions of the contrary party. If ye may but cross-examine and interrogate their actions against their words, these will soon confess the invalidity of their solemnest confes ions. Decay of Piety. The judges shall, as they think fit, interrogate or cross-examine the witnesses. Spectator CROSS-STAFF. n. s. [from cross and staff.] An instrument commonly called the forestaff, used by seamen to take the meridian altitude of the sun or stars. Harris. CRO'SSBITE. n. s. [cross and bite } A deception; a cheat. The fox, that trusted to his address and manage, without so much as dreaming of a crus bite from so silly an animal, fell himself into the pit that he had digged for another. L'Estrange. To CRO'SSBITE. v. a. [from the noun) To contravene by deception. No rhetorick must be spent against crass-biting a country evidence, and frighting him out of his senses. Caliser. That many knotty points there are, Which all discuss, but few can clear; As nature slily had thought fit, Prior For some by-ends, to cross-bite wit. CROSSBOW. n. s. [cross and bow.] A missive weapon, formed by placing a bow athwart a stock. Gentlemen suffer their beasts to run wild in their woods and waste ground, where they are hunted and killed with cross-bots and pieces, in the manner of deer. Carew of Cornwall, The master of the cross-bows, lord Rambures. Shakspeart. Testimony is like the shot of a long bow, which owes its efficacy to the force of the shooter; argument is like the shot of the cross-be, equally forcible whether discharged by a giant or a dwarf. Begle. CROSSBOWER. n.s. [from crossbow.] A shooter with a crossbow. The French assisted themselves by land with the crossbowers of Genoa against the English. Raleigh's Enag CRO'SSGRAINED. adj. [cross and grain.] 1. Having the fibres transverse or irregular. If the stuff proves crossgrained in any part of its length, then you must turn your stuff to plane it the contrary way, so far as it runs crossgreined. Moxsa. 2. Perverse; troublesome; vexatious. We find in sullen writs, And cross-grain'd works of modern wits, The wonder of the ignorant. Hudibras. The spirit of contradiction, in a cross-grained woman, is incurable. L'Eitrang, She was none of your cross-grained, termagant, scolding jades, that one had as good be hanged as live in the house with. Arbuthnot. & crossness, or aptness to oppose; but the deeper sort, to envy, or mere mischief. Bacon. I deny nothing fit to be granted, out of crossness or humour. King Charles. Who would have imagined that the stiff crossness of a poor captive should ever have had the power to make Haman's seat so uneasy to him? L'Estrange. They help us to forget the crossness of men and things, compose our cares and our passions, Collier. and lay our disappointments asleep. CRO'SSROW. n. s. [cross and row.] Alphabet; so named because a cross is placed at the beginning, to show that the end of learning is piety. He hearkens after prophecies and dreams: The least unhappy persons do, in so fickle and Damn'd spirits all, It hath soft leaves, like the ladies bedstraw: from which it differs in the number of leaves that are produced at every joint; which in this are only four, disposed in form of a cross. Miller. CROTCH. n. s. [croc, French.] A hook or fork. There is a tradition of a dilemma that Moreton used to raise the benevolence to higher rates; and some called it his fork, and some his crotch. Bacon. Save elme, ash, and crab tree for cart and for plough, Save step for a stile of the crotch and the bough. Tusser. CRO'TCHET. n. s. [crochet, French.] [From A stately temple shoots within the skies, The crotchets of their cot in columns rise. Dryd. 3. [In printing.] Hooks in which words, are included [thus]. 4. A perverse conceit; an odd fancy. All the devices and crotchets of new inventions, which crept into her, tended either to Howel. twitch or enlarge the ivy. The horse smelt him out, and presently a crotchet came in his head how he might counter"L'Estrange. mine him. To CROUCH, v. n. [crochu, crooked, Fr.] 1. To stoop low; to lie close to the ground: as, the lion crouches to his master. 2. To fawn; to bend servilely; to stoop meanly. Every one that is left in thine house, shall come and crouch to him for a piece of silver and a morsel of bread. At his heels, 1 Sam. Leasht in like hounds, should famine, sword, Shakspeare. CROUP. n. s. [croupe, French.] CROW. n. s. [cɲape, Saxon; corvus, 1. A large black bird that feeds upon the The crows and choughs, that wing the midway air, Shew scarce so gross as beetles. Shakspeare. 2. To pluck a CROW, is to be industrious If you dispute, we must even pluck a crow about it. Resolve, before we go, L'Estrange. Hudibras. 3. A bar of iron, with a beak, used as a lever to force open doors; as the Latins called a hook corvus. 4. The crow is used as a lever to lift up the ends of great heavy timber, and then they thrust the claws between the ground and the timber; and laying some stuff behind the crow, they draw the other end of the shank backwards, and so raise the timber. Moxon's Mechan, Exercises. Get me an iron crow, and bring it straight Unto my cell. Shakspeare's Romeo and Juliet. Against the gate employ your crows of iron. Southern. [from To crow.] The voice of a cock, or the noise which he makes in his gayety. To CROW. v. n. pret. I crew, or crowed; 1. To make the noise which a cock makes But even then the morning cock crew loud, Shakspeare's Hamlet. Diogenes called an ill physician, cock. Why? saith he. Diogenes answered, Because when Bacon. you crow men use to rise. That the lion trembles at the crowing of the cock, king James, upon trial, found to be fabu lous. Hakerill. Within this homestead liv'd, without a peer 2. To boast; to bully; to vapour; to bluster; to swagger. Selby is crowing, and, though always defeated by his wife, still crowing on. Grandison. CROWD. n. s. [cnud, Saxon.] 1. A multitude confusedly pressed toge ther. 2. A promiscuous medley, without order or distinction. He could then compare the confusion of a multitude to that tumult he had observed in the Icarian sea, dashing and breaking among its crowd of islands. Pope. 3. The vulgar; the populace. He went not with the crowd to see a shrine, But fed us by the way with food divine. Dryd. 4. [from crauth, Welsh.] A fiddle. Hark how the minstrels 'gin to shrill aloud Their merry musick that resounds from far; The pipe, the tabor, and the trembling croud, That well agree withouten breach or jar. Spenser. His fiddle is your proper purchase, Won in the service of the churches; And by your doom must be allow'd To be, or be no more, a crowd. To CROWD. v. a. [from the noun.] I. To fill with confused multitudes. Hudibras. A mind which is ever crowding its memory with things which it learns, may cramp the invention itself. -Watts. 2. To press close together. The time misorder'd, doth in common sense Crowd us and crush us to this monstrous form, To hold our safety up. Shakspeare's Henry v. It seems probable that the sea doth still grow narrower from age to age; and sinks more within its channel and the bowels of the earth, according as it can make its way into all those subterraneous cavities, and crowd the air out of them. Burnet's Theory. As the mind itself is thought to take up no space, so its actions seem to require no time; but many of them seem to be crowded into an instant. Then let us fill Locke. This little interval, this pause of life, 3. To encumber by multitudes. How short is life! Why will vain courtiers toil, And crowd a vainer monarch for a smile? Granville. 4. To CROWD Sail. [a sea phrase.] To spread wide the sails upon the yards. To CROWD. v. n. I. To swarm; to be numerous and confused. They follow their undaunted king; Crowd through their gates; and, in the fields of light, The shocking squadrons meet in mortal fight. Dryden's Virgil. 2. To thrust among a multitude. A mighty man, had not some cunning sin Amidst so many virtues crouded in. Coreley. CROWDER. n. s. [from crowd.] A fiddler. Chevy-chase sung by a blind crowder. Sidney. CROWFOOT. n. s. [from crow and foot; in Latin, ranunculus.] A flower. CRO'WFOOT. 1. s. [from crow and foot.] A caltrop, or piece of iron with four points, two, three, or four inches long ; so that, whatever way it falls, one point is up. It is used in war for incommoding the cavalry. Military Dict. CRO'wKEEPER. n. s. [crow and keep.] A scarecrow. That fellow handles his bow like a crowkeeper. Shakspeare. CROWN. n. s. [couronne, Fr. kroont, Dutch; corona, Latin.] 1. The ornament of the head which denotes imperial and regal dignity. If thou be a king, where is thy crown? -My crown is in my heart, not on my head: My crown is call'd content; A crown it is that seldom kings enjoy. Shaki. And on this couple drop a blessed crown. Shaki. Is it not as great a presumption in us to become God's sons; and to inherit kingdoms, and to hope for crowns, and thrones, and sceptres; as it is to sit down with him as his guests? 2. A garland. 3. 4. 5. Kettlewell, Receive a crown for thy well ordering of the feast. Ecclus. Reward; honorary distinction. They do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible. 1 Cor. Let merit crowns, and justice laurels give, But let me happy by your pity live. Dryden Regal power; royalty. The succession of a crown in several countries places it on different heads. The top of the head, in a contemptu. |