To bind, fit, or otherwise provide with wire; put wire in, on, around, through, etc.: as, to wire corks in bottling liquors; to wire beads; to wire a fence; to wire a bird-skin, as in taxidermy; to wire a house for electric lighting.
To snare by means of a wire: as, to wire a bird.
To send through a telegraphic wire; send by telegraph, as a message; telegraph: as, wire a reply.
To be wound or bound about like wire; encircle.
In surgery, to maintain the ends of (a fractured bone) in close apposition by means of wire passed through holes drilled in the bone.
To flow in currents as thin as wire.
To communicate by means of a telegraphic wire; telegraph.
noun.
In paper-making, a general term for the woven brass wire-cloth used in a Fourdrinier or paper-making machine.
noun.
By derivation from this, an annealed wire of size and weight suitable for weaving into nettings, wire-cloth, and the like.
noun.
An extremely elongated body of elastic material; specifically, a slender bar of metal, commonly circular in section, from the size which can be bent by the hand with some difficulty down to a fine thread.
noun.
A twisted thread; a filament.
noun.
A quantity of wire used for various purposes, especially in electric transmission, as in case of the telephone, the telegraph, electric lighting, etc.; specifically, a telegraph-wire, and hence (colloquially) the telegraph system itself: as, to send orders by wire.
noun.
A metallic string of a musical instrument; hence, poetically, the instrument itself.
noun.
The lash; the scourge: alluding to the use of metallic whips.
noun.
In ornithology, one of the extremely long, slender, wire-like filaments or shafts of the plumage of various birds. See wired, wire-tailed, and cut under Videstrdda.
noun.
plural Figuratively, that by which any organization or body of persons is controlled and directed: now used chiefly in political slang. See wire-pulling.
noun.
A pickpocket with long fingers, expert at picking women's pockets.
noun.
A fiber of cobweb, a fine platinum wire, or a line upon glass, fixed in the focus of a telescope, to aid in comparing the positions of objects.
Made of wire; consisting of or fitted with wires: as, a wire sieve; a wire bird-cage.
In electricity, a kind of Wheatstone bridge in which two adjacent resistances are formed by a wire which can be divided in any ratio by means of a sliding contact and a graduated scale.
noun.
A corruption of weir.