MORTAR • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Mortar

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/mˈɔrtər/ Listen

noun

Mortar n.

A strong vessel, commonly in form of an inverted bell, in which substances are pounded or rubbed with a pestle.

(Mil.) A short piece of ordnance, used for throwing bombs, carcasses, shells, etc., at high angles of elevation, as 45°, and even higher; so named from its resemblance in shape to the utensil above described.

Mortar bed (Mil.), a framework of wood and iron, suitably hollowed out to receive the breech and trunnions of a mortar.

Mortar boat or Mortar vessel (Naut.), a boat strongly built and adapted to carrying a mortar or mortars for bombarding; a bomb ketch.

Mortar piece, a mortar. (Obs.)

Mortar n. (Arch.) A building material made by mixing lime, cement, or plaster of Paris, with sand, water, and sometimes other materials; used in masonry for joining stones, bricks, etc., also for plastering, and in other ways.

Mortar bed, a shallow box or receptacle in which mortar is mixed.

Mortar n. A chamber lamp or light. (Obs.)

verb

Mortar v. t. To plaster or make fast with mortar.

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Etymology of 'Mortar'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Mortar" Quotes from Famous Books

... I, "I should think this day's pleasuring would kill him." "Now, wouldn't you think so?" said Mrs. Kew, sympathizingly; "but the truth is, you couldn't kill one of those Crapers if you pounded him in a mortar." ...

— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... is so plainly marked in the roof-supporting pillars as to give them the appearance of having been prepared by skillful hands, in several blocks, and afterwards arranged in place without the aid of mortar. Unfortunately, all efforts to photograph this wonderful portico have failed to give satisfaction—its position above the river being such as to afford no point for the proper placing of the camera; but a second visit made for the purpose of trying was far from ...

— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen

... the sharpening of the axe more than those little things accessory to these main matters, as the kindling of the coals and preparing the stone-dust. Yet farther, a carpenter would justly blame us, if we should affirm it is not his work to build houses or ships but to bore holes or to make mortar; and the Muses would be implacably incensed with him that should say their business is only to make harps, pipes and such musical instruments, not the institution and correcting of manners and the government of those men's passions ...

— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... the fountain Ardvi-cura, and distilling the beverage of immortality. The Aryans of India connected a similar idea with their Soma, for the fermented liquor that they produced by pounding its branches in a mortar, and offered as a libation to their gods, is named by them Amritam, "ambrosia draught that renders immortal." The Haoma and its sacred juice is also called "that which keeps off death," in the ninth chapter of the Yacna of the Zoroastrians. It is for this reason that, both with the Indians ...

— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... debase it into the mere tool of the senses; the tool of a materialism more base and sordid than any that the world has ever known; more sordid, a thousand-fold, than the materialism of ages, when there was yet a god in the wood and the stone, when there was yet a god in the brick and the mortar. This 'broken science' that has no end of ends, this godless science, this railway learning that travels with restless, ever quickening speed, no whither,—these dead, rattling 'branches' and slivers of arts and sciences, these modern arts and sciences, hacked and cut away from that tree ...

— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

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