Webster
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Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary · 1913

Bat

Bat (băt), n. [OE. batte, botte, AS. batt; perhaps fr. the Celtic; cf. Ir. bat, bata, stick, staff; but cf. also F. batte a beater (thing), wooden sword, battre to beat.]

1. A large stick; a club; specifically, a piece of wood with one end thicker or broader than the other, used in playing baseball, cricket, etc.

2. (Mining) Shale or bituminous shale. Kirwan.

3. A sheet of cotton used for filling quilts or comfortables; batting.

4. A part of a brick with one whole end.

Bat bolt (Machinery), a bolt barbed or jagged at its butt or tang to make it hold the more firmly. Knight.

Bat, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Batted (băt′tĕd); p. pr. & vb. n. Batting.] To strike or hit with a bat or a pole; to cudgel; to beat. Holland.

Bat, v. i. To use a bat, as in a game of baseball.

Bat, n. [Corrupt. from OE. back, backe, balke; cf. Dan. aften-bakke (aften evening), Sw. natt-backa (natt night), Icel. leðr-blaka (leðr leather), Icel. blaka to flutter.] (Zoöl.) One of the Cheiroptera, an order of flying mammals, in which the wings are formed by a membrane stretched between the elongated fingers, legs, and tail. The common bats are small and insectivorous. See Cheiroptera and Vampire.

Silent bats in drowsy clusters cling. Goldsmith.

Bat tick (Zoöl.), a wingless, dipterous insect of the genus Nycteribia, parasitic on bats.

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Noah Porter, editor (Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913). Public domain. Text as transcribed by MICRA, Inc., from Project Gutenberg. Changed for Deep Dive Bible: Greek, which our source spelled in Latin letters, set in Greek letters; entries of one spelling merged into one article; Greek words our source left out (shown as “?”), read from the 1898 printing, from the same plates (the Library of Congress’s copy), where the place could be found with certainty. Of the others, 1,362 (a word or a single letter each) were inferred by AI from the context by the dictionary’s own rules and are marked with a wavy underline (tap or point at one to see the note); the rest, which could not be inferred with confidence, are left as “?”.