(n.) A company or collection of living creatures; -- especially applied to sheep and birds, rarely to persons or (except in the plural) to cattle and other large animals; as, a flock of ravenous fowl.
(n.) A Christian church or congregation; considered in their relation to the pastor, or minister in charge.
(v. i.) To gather in companies or crowds.
(v. t.) To flock to; to crowd.
(n.) A lock of wool or hair.
(n.) Woolen or cotton refuse (sing. / pl.), old rags, etc., reduced to a degree of fineness by machinery, and used for stuffing unpholstered furniture.
(sing. / pl.) Very fine, sifted, woolen refuse, especially that from shearing the nap of cloths, used as a coating for wall paper to give it a velvety or clothlike appearance; also, the dust of vegetable fiber used for a similar purpose.
(v. t.) To coat with flock, as wall paper; to roughen the surface of (as glass) so as to give an appearance of being covered with fine flock.
Example Sentences:
(1) Lambing rates approach 1.5 lambs per ewe per year, but a death rate of 23 per cent and an offtake of 27 per cent, means that flock numbers are probably slightly declining.
(2) The effect of scrotal mange (Chorioptes bovis) on semen quality was assessed in a flock of rams during an outbreak of chorioptic mange and in rams with experimentally induced chorioptic mange.
(3) Already the demand for such a liturgy is growing among clergy, who are embarrassed by having to withhold the church's official support from so many of their own flock who are in civil partnerships.
(4) Our folks died to get us the right to vote, so go out and use it," he told his flock.
(5) Circumstantial evidence indicated that in the field; the incubation period of P multocida in a turkey flock may be between 2 to 7 weeks.
(6) Twenty-two parent (multiplier) breeder flocks became infected.
(7) Data were collected from flocks located in Kumagaya city (36 degrees N, Japan), where they were subjected to periodic seasonal changes in photoperiod and ambient temperature specific to that area.
(8) Haemagglutinating viruses have been isolated from these flocks and evidence from experimental and field investigations suggest these are the aetiological agents of EDS 76.
(9) The presence of toxoplasmosis was ruled out via investigations of blood sera taken from weaned lambs and from ewes that had miscarried in the same flock, employing the microprecipitation test in agar gel after Hubner and Uhliková.
(10) The program is based on accreditation of flocks that have passed two successive serological tests with an interval of six months between and post-accreditation tests every 12 months.
(11) Also studied was the serum resistance of seven serotype 3, 4 isolates obtained from the lungs of M9-vaccinated turkeys from seven flocks experiencing increased mortality due to fowl cholera.
(12) Many sera that were negative in the AGP test were found to have VN antibodies, and virtually all sera in a commercial flock were free of precipitin but had VN titers.
(13) He added that London remained the "libel capital of the world – the place where the rich and dodgy flock to keep their reputations intact".
(14) Still the audiences flocked to me in Stockholm, Rome, Stockholm and Stockholm.
(15) Both breeds were contained in each of two separate flocks housed indoors year-round on expanded metal floors in windowless buildings.
(16) Of these 48 strains, 43 (90%) came from the southern part of France in which B. melitensis infection in sheep and goats is enzootic and where the dissemination of this species by sheep flocks moving to mountain pastures most often accounted for cattle contamination.
(17) Acquired HEV antibody appeared at 8 to 10 weeks, and 100% of the meat and breeder turkey flocks were positive after 11 weeks of age.
(18) Individual test day yields for 1548 lactations of 600 ewes from 32 flocks (1975 to 1985) were used to define the shape of the lactation curve.
(19) The changes in nematode cholinesterase (ChE) activities were examined in relation to the development of resistance in (1) a flock of young grazing sheep, (2) grazing and penned sheep treated with dexamethasone and (3) penned sheep receiving a single mixed infection.
(20) Early on Sunday morning, Malcolm Turnbull looked out to the Australian electorate and expressed his own profound alienation from the lived experiences of the losers of globalisation – the people who had flocked to Nick Xenophon and Pauline Hanson and to Labor on the basis that the ALP had climbed down partially from the neoliberal pedestal constructed by Bob Hawke and Paul Keating.
Spate
Definition:
(n.) A river flood; an overflow or inundation.
Example Sentences:
(1) In recent years, a spate of health care reform proposals have emerged on the American agenda.
(2) The processing centre been seized by more than a month of daily protests, as well as a spate of suicide attempts over the last 48 hours.
(3) The year since Jo Cox’s death has seen rapid political change around the world: unexpected election results, a rise in digital interference in democratic elections by foreign powers , and a spate of appalling terrorist attacks.
(4) There has been a spate of thefts of rhino horns and elephant tusks from European museums, zoos and auction houses in recent years, amid a rising illegal trade in poached or stolen ivory .
(5) A spate of suicides by employees of an electronics giant in China has fuelled concern about the pressures of factory life and the emotional vulnerability of young employees.
(6) Angry demonstrations over the government’s refusal to relieve Kobani , the Syrian canton under siege from the brutal group calling itself Islamic State (Isis), led to a spate of deaths.
(7) A series of measures have been brought in since the December attack aimed at making women safer, but despite these, there has been a spate of attacks on women in Delhi since the beginning of March, including four reported assaults on girls under 18.
(8) Rosenberg agreed, pointing out that the spate of bad news was falling at a critical time in the election cycle, when senior politicians had to finally decide whether to throw their hat in the ring.
(9) An estimate is made of the frequency and effects of spates.
(10) The service has been hit by a spate of station closures over the past 18 months, including TheJazz, OneWord, Core and Capital Life.
(11) It's the first interview he's done since his marriage and divorce and the split-up of the Ordinary Boys, and it all comes rushing out in a spate, a tangle of chronological confusions and jokes, and groans when I quote some of his old interviews back at him, and statements of contrition, and digressions about Dawkins or whatever, and here's the confounding thing - he's really nothing like I was expecting, not indie-boy sulky, or attempting to play it cool, he's just talkative and engaging, and he has a sense of humour about himself that, from reading his previous interviews, I wouldn't have even guessed at.
(12) Calls are mounting for hardline Jewish settlers to be classified as terrorists after a spate of attacks on Palestinian property in the West Bank and Israel , and threats of violence towards Israeli soldiers.
(13) As in journals elsewhere there followed a spate of articles reporting various aspects of cocaine and its usage, including an abortive attempt to find an alternative agent.
(14) Merkel’s office has not commented on her dictionary nomination so far, though they might arguably have been able to insist the word was rude or discriminatory, on the same grounds that the nominated word “Alpha Kevin”, meaning the “thickest person of all” was removed from Langenscheidt list, after a reported spate of complaints from people called Kevin, or their parents.
(15) Shirin Ebadi , the Iranian Nobel peace prizewinner, joined human rights organisations in February this year in appealing to Iran to impose a moratorium on executions – but after a brief pause following a spate of adverse international publicity, the pace of judicial killings has accelerated again.
(16) A spate of US companies have sought acquisitions in the UK and elsewhere this year to gain a lower rate of corporation tax.
(17) The coalition's radical shake-up of the planning system was designed to unleash a spate of new housebuilding.
(18) The chair of the Senate subcommittee on privacy, technology and the law wrote to the company last month setting out ten questions after a spate of incidents that he said indicated a “troubling disregard for customers’ privacy”.
(19) "A toxic mix of gold, greed and alcohol has resulted in a spate of brutal murders in the interior," the newspaper reported, cataloguing killings involving miners, jewellers and shopkeepers working at the gold mines.
(20) Donald Trump has made the most direct appeal of his campaign to African American voters as he battles to offset dismal polling among black voters and draw political capital from a recent spate of racially charged unrest in the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.