Emily Dickinson Lexicon

CAST, n.

1. The act of casting; a throw; the thing thrown; the form or state of throwing; kind or manner of throwing.
2. The distance passed by a thing thrown; or the space through which a thing thrown may ordinarily pass; as, about a stone's cast. – Luke xxii.
3. A stroke; a touch. This was a cast of Wood's politics. – Swift.
4. Motion or turn of the eye; direction, look or glance; a squinting. They let you see by one cast of the eye. – Addison.
5. A throw of dice; hence, a state of chance or hazard. It is an even cast, whether the army should march this way or that way. – South. Hence the phrase, the last cast, is used to denote that all is ventured on one throw, or one effort.
6. Form; shape. A heroic poem in another cast. – Prior.
7. A tinge; a slight coloring, or slight degree of a color; as, a cast of green. Hence, a slight alteration in external appearance, or deviation from natural appearance. The native hue of resolution / Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought. – Shak.
8. Manner; air; mien; as, a peculiar cast of countenance. This sense implies, the turn or manner of throwing; as the neat cast of verse. – Pope.
9. A flight; a number of hawks let go at once. – Sidney.
10. A small statue of bronze, plaster, &c. – Encyc.
11. Among founders, a tube of wax, fitted into a mold, to give shape to metal.
12. A cylindrical piece of brass or copper, slit in two lengthwise, to form a canal or conduit, in a mold, for conveying metal.
13. Among plumbers, a little brazen funnel, at one end of a mold, for casting pipes without sodering, by means of which the melted metal is poured into the mold. – Encyc.
14. Whatever is cast in a mold.
15. [Sp. and Port. casta.] A breed, race, lineage, kind, sort.
16. An assignment of the parts of a play to the several actors.
17. A trick. – Martin.