What does "bastard" mean?
Bastard: (Sugar Refining) (a) An inferior quality of soft brown sugar, obtained from the sirups that (b) A large size of mold, in which sugar is drained.
Additional senses
- 2.A sweet Spanish wine like muscadel in flavor. Brown bastard is your only drink. Shak.
- 3.A writing paper of a particular size. See Paper.
- 4.Begotten and born out of lawful matrimony; illegitimate. See Bastard, n., note.
- 5.Lacking in genuineness; spurious; false; adulterate; -- applied to things which resemble those which are genuine, but are really not so. That bastard self-love which is so vicious in itself, and productive of so many vices. Barrow.
- 6.Of an unusual make or proportion; as, a bastard musket; a bastard culverin. [Obs.]
- 7.(Print.) Abbreviated, as the half title in a page preceding the full title page of a book. Bastard ashlar (Arch.), stones for ashlar work, roughly squared at the quarry. -- Bastard file, a file intermediate between the coarsest and the second cut. -- Bastard type (Print.), type having the face of a larger or a smaller size than the body; e.g., a nonpareil face on a brevier body. -- Bastard wing (Zoöl.), three to five quill feathers on a small joint corresponding to the thumb in some mam malia; the alula.
- 8.To bastardize. [Obs.] Bacon.
Sources
- Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913 edition (public domain, via GCIDE / Project Gutenberg).
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- Published: 2026-07-17T00:00:00-07:00 · Modified: 2026-07-17T00:00:00-07:00