Emily Dickinson Lexicon

CE-TOL'O-GIST, n.

One who is versed in the natural history of the whale and its kindred animals.

CE-TOL'O-GY, n. [Gr. κῆτος, a whale, and λογος, discourse.]

The doctrine or natural history of cetaceous animals. – Ed. Encyc.

CE'TUS, n. [Supra.]

In astronomy, the Whale, a large constellation of the southern hemisphere, containing ninety-seven stars. – Encyc.

CEY'LAN-ITE, n. [from Ceylon.]

A mineral classed with the ruby family; called also pleonaste. Its color is a muddy, dark blue, and grayish black, approaching to iron black. It occurs in grains, or small crystals, either perfect octahedrons, or truncated on the edges, or with the angles acuminated by four planes. It occurs also in rhomboidal dodecahedrons. – Cyc. Ure.

CHAB'A-SIE, or CHAB'A-SITE, n. [Gr. χαβαζιος, one of twenty species of stones mentioned in the poem περι λιθων, ascribed to Orpheus. This term was introduced into modern mineralogy by Box d'Antic. Schabasit, Werner.]

A mineral which has been regarded as a variety of zeolite. It is divisible into very obtuse rhomboids. – Dict. Nat. Hist. This mineral occurs in crystals, whose primitive form is nearly a cube. – Ure. Chabasie has a foliated structure; its fracture is somewhat conchoidal or uneven, with a glistening vitreous luster. It is translucent, sometimes transparent. Its color is white or grayish white, sometimes with a rosy tinge. Before the blowpipe it intumesces a little, and easily melts into a white spungy mass. – Cleaveland.

CHAD, n.

A kind of fish pronounced shad. – Carew.

CHAFE, n.

1. Heat, excited by friction.
2. Violent agitation of the mind or passions; heat; fret; passion. – Camden.

CHAFE, v.i.

1. To be excited or heated; to rage; to fret; to be in violent action. – Pope.
2. To act violently upon, by rubbing; to fret against, as waves against a shore. The troubled Tyber chafing with his shores. – Shak.
3. To be fretted and worn by nabbing; as, a cable chafes.

CHAFE, v.t. [Fr. echauffer; Sp. escalfar, to warm; Port. escalfar, to poach or boil slightly; from the root of L. caleo, whence calefio, calfacio.]

1. To excite heat or inflammation by friction, as to chafe the skin; also, to fret and wear by rubbing, as to chafe a cable.
2. To excite heat in the mind; to excite passion; to inflame; to make angry; to cause to fret; to provoke or incense. – 2 Sam. xvii. 8.
3. To excite violent action; to cause to rage; as, the wind chafes the ocean.
4. To perfume; rather, to stimulate, or agitate; to excite by pungent odors. Lilies, whose scent chafed the air. – Suckling.

CHAF'ED, pp.

Heated or fretted by rubbing; worn by friction.

CHAF'ER, n.¹

One who chafes.

CHAF'ER, n.² [Sax. ceafor; D. kever; G. käfer.]

An insect, a species of Scarabæus, or beetle.

CHAF'ER-Y, n. [from chafe.]

In iron works, a force in which an ancony or square mass of iron, hammered into a bar in the middle, with its ends rough, is reduced to a complete bar, by hammering down the ends to the shape of the middle. – Encyc.

CHAFE'-WAX, n.

In England, an officer belonging to the Lord Chancellor, who fits the wax for the sealing of writs. – Harris.

CHAFF, n. [Sax. ceaf; D. kaf; G. kaff.]

1. The husk or dry calyx of corn and grasses. In common language, the word is applied to the husks when separated from the corn by thrashing, riddling, or winnowing. The word is sometimes used rather improperly to denote straw cut small for the food of cattle. – Martyn. Encyc.
2. Refuse; worthless matter; especially that which is light, and apt to be driven by the wind. In Scripture, false doctrines, fruitless designs, hypocrites and ungodly men are compared to chaff. – Ps. i. 4. Jer. xxiii. 28. Is. xxxiii. 11. Matth. iii. 12.

CHAF'FER, n.

Merchandise. [Not in use.] – Skelton.

CHAF'FER, v.i. [Sax. ceapian; D. koopen; G. kaufen; Sw. kåpa; Dan. kiöber, to bargain or buy. It seems to be radically the same word as cheap, cheapen, and chap in chapman. See Cheap.]

To treat about a purchase; to bargain; to haggle; to negotiate; to chop and change; as, to chaffer for preferments. – Dryden.

CHAF'FER, v.t.

To buy; to exchange. – Spenser. [In this sense it is obsolete.]

CHAF'FER-ER, n.

One who chaffers; a bargainer; a buyer.

CHAF'FER-ING, ppr.

Bargaining; buying.

CHAF'FERN, n.

A vessel for heating water. [Local.]

CHAF'FER-Y, n.

Traffick; buying and selling. [Obs.] – Spenser.

CHAF'FINCH, n. [chaff and finch.]

A species of birds of the genus Fringilla, which are said to delight in chaff; and are admired for their song.

CHAFF'LESS, a.

Without chaff. – Shak.

CHAFF'WEED, n.

A plant, cud-weed, a species of Gnaphalium; but this name is given also to the Centunculus. – Muhlenberg.