| knot | |
| 1. n. A looping of a piece of string or of any other long, flexible material that cannot be untangled without passing one or both ends of the material through its loops. | |
| Climbers must make sure that all knots are both secure and of types that will not weaken the rope. | |
| 2. n. (of hair, etc) A tangled clump. | |
| The nurse was brushing knots from the protesting child's hair. | |
| 3. n. A maze-like pattern. | |
| 4. n. (mathematics) A non-self-intersecting closed curve in (e.g., three-dimensional) space that is an abstraction of a knot (in sense 1 above). | |
| A knot can be defined as a non-self-intersecting broken line whose endpoints coincide: when such a knot is constrained to lie in a plane, then it is simply a polygon. | |
| A knot in its original sense can be modeled as a mathematical knot (or link) as follows: if the knot is made with a single piece of rope, then abstract the shape of that | |
| 5. n. A difficult situation. | |
| I got into a knot when I inadvertently insulted a policeman. | |
| 6. n. The whorl left in lumber by the base of a branch growing out of the tree's trunk. | |
| When preparing to tell stories at a campfire, I like to set aside a pile of pine logs with lots of knots, since they burn brighter and make dramatic pops and cracks. | |
| 7. n. Local swelling in a tissue area, especially skin, often due to injury. | |
| Jeremy had a knot on his head where he had bumped it on the bedframe. | |
| 8. n. A protuberant joint in a plant. | |
| 9. n. Any knob, lump, swelling, or protuberance. | |
| 10. n. the swelling of the Bulbus Glandis in members of the dog family; Canidae | |
| 11. n. The point on which the action of a story depends; the gist of a matter. | |
| the knot of the tale | |
| 12. n. (engineering) A node. | |
| 13. n. A kind of epaulet; a shoulder knot. | |
| 14. n. A group of people or things. | |
| 15. n. A bond of union; a connection; a tie. | |
| 16. n. (nautical) A unit of speed, equal to one nautical mile per hour. (From the practice of counting the number of knots in the log-line (as it plays out) in a standard time. Traditionally spaced at one ev | |
| Cedric claimed his old yacht could make 12 knots. | |
| 17. n. (slang) A nautical mile (incorrectly) | |
| 18. v. To form into a knot; to tie with a knot or knots. | |
| We knotted the ends of the rope to keep it from unravelling. | |
| 19. v. To form wrinkles in the forehead, as a sign of concentration, concern, surprise, etc. | |
| She knotted her brow in concentration while attempting to unravel the tangled strands. | |
| 20. v. To unite closely; to knit together. | |
| 21. v. (obsolete, rare) To entangle or perplex; to puzzle. | |
| 22. n. One of a variety of shore birds; the red-breasted sandpiper (variously Calidris canutus or). | |
