Emily Dickinson Lexicon

CHECK, n.

1. A stop; hinderance; rebuff; sudden restraint, or continued restraint; curb; control; government.
2. That which stops or restrains, as reproof, reprimand, rebuke, slight, or disgust, fear, apprehension, a person; any stop or obstruction. – Shak. Dryden. Clarendon.
3. In falconry, when a hawk forsakes her proper game, to follow rooks, pies, or other fowls, that cross her in her flight. – Bailey. Encyc.
4. The correspondent cipher of a bank note; a corresponding indenture; any counter-register. – Johnson.
5. A term in chess, when one party obliges the other either to move or guard his king.
6. An order for money, drawn on a banker or on the cashier of a bank, payable to the bearer. This is a sense derived from that in definition 4.
7. In popular use, checkered cloth; check, for checkered. Check or check-roll, a roll or book containing the names of persons who are attendants and in the pay of a king or great personage, as domestic servants. – Bailey. Encyc. Clerk of the check, in the British King's household, has the check and control of the yeomen of the guard, and all the ushers belonging to the royal family, the care of the watch, &c. – Bailey. Encyc. Clerk of the check, in the British Royal Dock-yards, is an officer who keeps a register of all the men employed on board his majesty's ships and vessels, and of all the artificers in the service of the navy, at the port where he is settled.