Word Direct Answers

What does "pounce" mean?

Pounce: Charcoal dust, or some other colored powder for making patterns through perforated designs, -- used by embroiderers, lace makers, etc. Pounce box, a box for sprinkling pounce. -- Pounce paper, a transparent paper for tracing.

Additional senses

  1. 2.To sprinkle or rub with pounce; as, to pounce paper, or a pattern.
  2. 3.The claw or talon of a bird of prey. Spenser. Burke.
  3. 4.A punch or stamp. [Obs.] "A pounce to print money with." Withals.
  4. 5.Cloth worked in eyelet holes. [Obs.] Homilies.
  5. 6.To strike or seize with the talons; to pierce, as with the talons. [Archaic] Stooped from his highest pitch to pounce a wren. Cowper. Now pounce him lightly, And as he roars and rages, let's go deeper. J. Fletcher.
  6. 7.To punch; to perforate; to stamp holes in, or dots on, by way of ornament. [Obs.] Sir T. Elyot.
  7. 8.To fall suddenly and seize with the claws; -- with on or upon; as, a hawk pounces upon a chicken. Also used figuratively. Derision is never so agonizing as when it pounces on the wanderings of misguided sensibility. Jeffrey.

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