(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.
Villain
Definition:
(n.) One who holds lands by a base, or servile, tenure, or in villenage; a feudal tenant of the lowest class, a bondman or servant.
(n.) A baseborn or clownish person; a boor.
(n.) A vile, wicked person; a man extremely depraved, and capable or guilty of great crimes; a deliberate scoundrel; a knave; a rascal; a scamp.
(a.) Villainous.
(v. t.) To debase; to degrade.
Example Sentences:
(1) But I know the full story and it’s a bit different from what people see.” The full story is heavy on the extremes of emotion and as the man who took a stricken but much-loved club away from its community, Winkelman knows that his part is that of villain; the war of words will rumble on.
(2) They’re not moustache-twirling villains that are going, “ah ha ha that’s great”, they’re going: “You’re right.
(3) Society needs a villain and right now we’re convenient.” “ I will carefully admit there has been an awful lot of almonds planted that maybe shouldn’t have been because outside money came in and wanted to plant,” he says.
(4) Reith, “his dour handsome face scarred like that of a villain in a melodrama”, was “a strange shepherd for such a mixed, bohemian flock … he had under his aegis a bevy of ex-soldiers, ex-actors, ex-adventurers which … even a Dartmoor prison governor might have had difficulty in controlling”.
(5) The success of Capote paved the way for bigger and more nuanced parts for Hoffman, his turn as the villain in Mission: Impossible III (2006) notwithstanding.
(6) Maleficent, Disney's latest film out on 28 May, offers the untold back story of the villain from the 1959 animated classic Sleeping Beauty, with Jolie in the title role.
(7) When I was nine or 10 I leapt directly from Doctor Dolittle to Dr No, leaving behind all those stupid talking animals and free-falling into a far naughtier realm of suavely promiscuous government assassins, hot shell-diving beauties and villains with metal hands and messianic plans for humanity.
(8) And that’s what we do in drama and comedy: we create our own heroes and villains, so no one really gets hurt.
(9) You're a devious villain conducting the perfect crime, like the dashing guest star in the opening scene of a classic Columbo.
(10) These villains have limited aspirations, and the man in the white hat has a limited arsenal of era-appropriate weaponry: a gun, a bow and arrow, a few grenades, maybe even a tank.
(11) The people shaping the news require a very simple story – they have to be angels and villains.” John Stoltenberg is a gay-rights activist who lived with the feminist writer Andrea Dworkin until her death in 2005.
(12) We are not the villains you paint us on your trollblogs.
(13) For the real villain – look behind Obama, to the Republican party.
(14) It is, according to environmentalist and MP Zac Goldsmith, the most dramatic turnaround of any global green villain ever seen and an encouraging sign that huge environmental challenges can be tackled.
(15) As Paltrow explains: “So-called pro-life measures are being used in ways that not only violate women’s reproductive rights, but create the basis for depriving them of their constitutional personhood and human rights.” While it may be easy to cast women who drink in pregnancy as villains, criminalising them does no one any favours, save for those with a broader anti-women agenda.
(16) Fleming was intrigued by Engelhard's extravagant lifestyle and when he wrote Goldfinger , published in 1959, he based its eponymous villain on him.
(17) In the Kenzie and Gennaro series, like all good detective fiction, the city is as sharp and unpredictable as the villains themselves.
(18) Why swapping heroes for heroines is a Top Dollar idea Read more The potential gender-swap casting comes after Britain’s Andrea Riseborough was named earlier this month as a frontrunner to play the villain Top Dollar in a high-profile upcoming remake of cult comic book movie The Crow.
(19) Mohammed al-Sabban Senior economic adviser, Saudi Arabia Moustachioed high-up in his country's ministry of petroleum and mineral resources, leader of the Saudi Arabian negotiating team, and a reasonable bet for Copenhagen's most likely villain.
(20) For one thing, villains always believe they are exceptional.