(n.) An itinerant licensed dealer in commodities used for food; a hawker; a huckster; -- formerly applied especially to one who bought grain in one place and sold it in another.
(n.) A carnivorous quadruped of the genus Meles or of an allied genus. It is a burrowing animal, with short, thick legs, and long claws on the fore feet. One species (M. vulgaris), called also brock, inhabits the north of Europe and Asia; another species (Taxidea Americana / Labradorica) inhabits the northern parts of North America. See Teledu.
(n.) A brush made of badgers' hair, used by artists.
(v. t.) To tease or annoy, as a badger when baited; to worry or irritate persistently.
(v. t.) To beat down; to cheapen; to barter; to bargain.
Example Sentences:
(1) In a single letter in February 2005, Charles urged a badger cull to prevent the spread of bovine tuberculosis – damning opponents to the cull as “intellectually dishonest”; lobbied for his preferred person to be appointed to crack down on the mistreatment of farmers by supermarkets; proposed his own aide to brief Downing Street on the design of new hospitals; and urged Blair to tackle an EU directive limiting the use of herbal alternative medicines in the UK.
(2) MPs have voted to abandon the controversial badger cull in England entirely, inflicting an embarrassing defeat on ministers who had already been forced to postpone the start of the killing until next summer.
(3) Forty-seven badgers were caught from the eight social groups.
(4) The government's decision to allow a cull of badgers, reportedly to combat bovine tuberculosis, "flies in the face of the scientific evidence" and will serve only to spread the disease, Labour claims.
(5) The planned cull had suffered a series of blows recently, including the discovery of up to twice as many badgers in the culling zones than expected, driving up the cost and complexity of the cull.
(6) Field trials found the BCG vaccine reduced the incidence of bovine TB in badgers by 73.8%.
(7) I tried hard not to think of a time hence when I could count every tree in the wood, when the badger sett would be in an open field.
(8) Rosie Woodroffe, a professor and a key member of an earlier landmark 10-year study of badger culling , said: "It would be extraordinarily unusual for natural causes to change badger populations so rapidly, and indeed no such changes have been seen [elsewhere].
(9) There was generally avoidance of pasture treated with badger urine up to 14 days old.
(10) Wild animals, particularly badgers, have been implicated as reservoirs of the infection.
(11) The killing of badgers to somehow “save” dairy and beef cows is perverse.
(12) Badgers need to be trapped before they can be vaccinated, and the process will need to be repeated annually for many years, which makes it extremely expensive to use.
(13) Sera obtained from 2 groups of badgers removed in bovine tuberculosis control operations have been examined for antibodies to 11 species of mycobacteria.
(14) There has certainly been a raft of policy announcements: on a green investment bank , subsidies for domestic renewable energy , electric vehicles , high speed rail , even badgers .
(15) The risk is that it removes relatively few badgers; then the worst case scenario is not just the loss of the risk reduction observed in the RBCT but the possibility of actually increasing the risk to local cattle herds (such as observed in reactively culled areas of the RBCT).
(16) Matters worsened when on-the-ground surveys, costing almost £1m, discovered up to twice as many badgers in the first cull areas in Gloucestershire and Somerset.
(17) After the July ruling, which was welcomed by the National Farmers Union, the British Veterinary Association and the British Cattle Veterinary Association, a spokesman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: "No one wants to cull badgers but last year bovine TB led to the slaughter of over 26,000 cattle, and to help eradicate the disease it needs to be tackled in badgers."
(18) The relative importance of the two mating periods is reflected in the seasonal pattern of bite wounding in adult male badgers; minor bite wounding in January-March was 2.3 times as frequent as in August-October, and moderate-extensive bite wounding was 3.1 times more frequent.
(19) Serological results obtained in badgers and wild boars also demonstrates the absence of direct or indirect horizontal transmission of the recombinant virus.
(20) On the ground beneath their feet lived salamanders, amphibians and plenty of mammals, including the badger-sized beast, repenomamus, which dined on dead dinosaurs.
Pester
Definition:
(v. t.) To trouble; to disturb; to annoy; to harass with petty vexations.
(v. t.) To crowd together in an annoying way; to overcrowd; to infest.
Example Sentences:
(1) The creation of Albion’s second goal was more artful, even if it started with Özil being pestered into surrendering possession near halfway.
(2) It was Tim, an archivist from Warners whom I had been pestering for years about trying to track down some long-lost film footage.
(3) They should not pressure children or pester parents to buy products, and promotional offers should be used with a "due sense of responsibility".
(4) The allegations are sure to concern many parents whose children are pestering them to buy the extensive range of Cars 2 toys launched to coincide with the movie, which hit UK cinema screens in July.
(5) Professional irritant Kenny Miller wins a corner down the right, with some incessant pestering.
(6) For a year I have been pestered with: "X has got Facebook.
(7) He kept pestering her, phoning and phoning and phoning her."
(8) But while the Christians are still pestering God, the end-of-daysers awaiting Armageddon, and the Aryan brothers proving the least convincing imaginable argument for the superiority of their race, things have changed quite drastically in porn, which has been even more vulnerable than cinema, TV or music to the predations of the internet.
(9) Kala-azar (KA), an enigmatic disease has resurged in India since 1970's after about a lull of 20 years, displaying its pestering nature.
(10) The band became pally with him and pestered for a support slot when his Black Pus project (another great name) came to town.
(11) After a bit of good-natured pestering, she agrees to sell all of us one drink so we can discuss the heady topic of race in America while slightly intoxicated.
(12) Artists don't stand next to their artwork in galleries pestering the public to part with their pound coins.
(13) For now he is determined to stick with his work in the building industry, despite his workmates pestering him for the odd Victoria sponge or carrot cake.
(14) Nine hours working as an exterminator takes a physical toll on the 45-year-old , who didn’t go to college, makes $33,000 a year, and relies on a steady swarm of pests to pester people in his 90% rural county.
(15) The new boss, Paul Pester, whose £1.6m outstanding bonuses from Lloyds are to be transferred to TSB, is also aiming for growth in current accounts, where it has only 4.2% market share despite having some 6% of high street branches.
(16) There are some innovative ideas about, he says, on ways of teaching children in school to wash their hands – in the hope that they will then go home and pester their parents to do the same.
(17) Joleon Lescott, who endured a torrid debut for Villa, and Micah Richards were pestered into errors in the opening minutes and the latter was especially relieved that Danny Drinkwater’s shot from 25 yards flew over the bar.
(18) Paul Pester, chief executive of TSB, said the branches that were closing were within 500 metres of another TSB branch and were part of the estate it inherited when it was carved out of Lloyds Banking Group last year.
(19) Pester said the bank had achieved its target of winning more than 6% of all new current accounts and those being switched between banks.
(20) Pester added that, of the 631 branches TSB started with, there were 15 locations where two or three branches were “within spitting distance of each other”.