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gear

gear is defined in Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1913) with 12 senses. The full text of each entry is reproduced verbatim below.

Definitions

  1. 1.Goods; property; household stuff. Chaucer. Homely gear and common ware. Robynson (More's Utopia)
  2. 2.Whatever is prepared for use or wear; manufactured stuff or material. Clad in a vesture of unknown gear. Spenser.
  3. 3.The harness of horses or cattle; trapping.
  4. 4.Warlike accouterments. [Scot.] Jamieson.
  5. 5.Manner; custom; behavior. [Obs.] Chaucer.
  6. 6.Business matters; affairs; concern. [Obs.] Thus go they both together to their gear. Spenser.
  7. 7.(Mech.) (a) A toothed wheel, or cogwheel; as, a spur gear, or a bevel gear; also, toothed wheels, collectively. (b) An apparatus for performing a special function; gearing; as, the feed gear of a lathe. (c) Engagement of parts with each other; as, in gear; out of gear.
  8. 8.pl. (Naut.) See 1st Jeer (b).
  9. 9.Anything worthless; stuff; nonsense; rubbish. [Obs. or Prov. Eng.] Wright. That servant of his that confessed and uttered this gear was an honest man. Latimer. Bever gear. See Bevel gear. -- Core gear, a mortise gear, or its skeleton. See Mortise wheel, under Mortise. -- Expansion gear (Steam Engine), the arrangement of parts for cutting off steam at a certain part of the stroke, so as to leave it to act upon the piston expansively; the cut-off. See under Expansion. -- Feed gear. See Feed motion, under Feed, n. -- Gear cutter, a machine or tool for forming the teeth of gear wheels by cutting. -- Gear wheel, any cogwheel. -- Running gear. See under Running. -- To throw in, or out of, gear (Mach.), to connect or disconnect (wheelwork or couplings, etc.); to put in, or out of, working relation.
  10. 10.To dress; to put gear on; to harness.
  11. 11.(Mach.) To provide with gearing. Double geared, driven through twofold compound gearing, to increase the force or speed; -- said of a machine.
  12. 12.To be in, or come into, gear.

Source: Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913 edition (public domain, via GCIDE / Project Gutenberg).

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