(n.) An instrument by means of which the bolt of a lock is shot or drawn; usually, a removable metal instrument fitted to the mechanism of a particular lock and operated by turning in its place.
(n.) An instrument which is turned like a key in fastening or adjusting any mechanism; as, a watch key; a bed key, etc.
(n.) That part of an instrument or machine which serves as the means of operating it; as, a telegraph key; the keys of a pianoforte, or of a typewriter.
(n.) A position or condition which affords entrance, control, pr possession, etc.; as, the key of a line of defense; the key of a country; the key of a political situation. Hence, that which serves to unlock, open, discover, or solve something unknown or difficult; as, the key to a riddle; the key to a problem.
(n.) That part of a mechanism which serves to lock up, make fast, or adjust to position.
(n.) A piece of wood used as a wedge.
(n.) The last board of a floor when laid down.
(n.) A keystone.
(n.) That part of the plastering which is forced through between the laths and holds the rest in place.
(n.) A wedge to unite two or more pieces, or adjust their relative position; a cotter; a forelock.
(n.) A bar, pin or wedge, to secure a crank, pulley, coupling, etc., upon a shaft, and prevent relative turning; sometimes holding by friction alone, but more frequently by its resistance to shearing, being usually embedded partly in the shaft and partly in the crank, pulley, etc.
(n.) An indehiscent, one-seeded fruit furnished with a wing, as the fruit of the ash and maple; a samara; -- called also key fruit.
(n.) A family of tones whose regular members are called diatonic tones, and named key tone (or tonic) or one (or eight), mediant or three, dominant or five, subdominant or four, submediant or six, supertonic or two, and subtonic or seven. Chromatic tones are temporary members of a key, under such names as " sharp four," "flat seven," etc. Scales and tunes of every variety are made from the tones of a key.
(n.) The fundamental tone of a movement to which its modulations are referred, and with which it generally begins and ends; keynote.
(n.) Fig: The general pitch or tone of a sentence or utterance.
(v. t.) To fasten or secure firmly; to fasten or tighten with keys or wedges.
Example Sentences:
(1) Community involvement is a key element of the Primary Health Care (PHC) approach, and thus an essential topic on a course for managers of Primary Health Care programmes.
(2) A key way of regaining public trust will be reforming the system of remuneration as agreed by the G20.
(3) Instead, the White House opted for a low-key approach, publishing a blogpost profiling Trinace Edwards, a brain-tumour victim who recently discovered she was eligible for Medicaid coverage.
(4) The presence of a few key residues in the amino-terminal alpha-helix of each ligand is sufficient to confer specificity to the interaction.
(5) The key warning from the Fed chair A summary of Bernanke's hearing Earlier... MPs in London quizzed the Bank of England on Libor.
(6) "Seller reports are key to identifying bad buyers and ridding them from our marketplace," says eBay.
(7) It is suggested that the low-density lipoprotein receptors in human fetal liver may play a key role in the regulation of the serum cholesterol levels during gestation.
(8) A key component of a career program should be recognition of a nurse's needs and the program should be evaluated to determine if these needs are met.
(9) As novel antibody therapeutics are developed for different malignancies and require evaluation with cells previously uncharacterized as antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity (ADCC) targets, efficient description of key parameters of the assay system expedites the preclinical assessment.
(10) Meanwhile, Hunt has been accused of backtracking on a key recommendation in the official report into Mid Staffs.
(11) The safe motherhood initiative demands an intersectoral, collaborative approach to gynecology, family planning, and child health in which midwifery is the key element.
(12) Acetylcholinesterase is a key enzyme in cholinergic neurotransmission for hydrolyzing acetylcholine and has been shown to possess arylacylamidase activity in addition to esterase activity.
(13) If Lagarde had been placed under formal investigation in the Tapie case, it would have risked weakening her position and further embarrassing both the IMF and France by heaping more judicial worries on a key figure on the international stage.
(14) Four goals, four assists, and constant movement have been a key part of the team’s success.
(15) Mechanosensitive ion channels may play a key role in transducing vascular smooth muscle (VSM) stretch into active force development.
(16) But Abaaoud, the man thought to be a key planner for the group behind the Paris attacks, boasted to a niece that he had brought around 90 militants back to Europe with him.
(17) Key therapeutic questions are whether beta-lactams can safely replace aminoglycosides for the treatment of gram-negative pneumonia, and whether monotherapy or aminoglycoside and beta-lactam combination antibiotic treatment is superior.
(18) Teaching procedures then establish and build these key components to fluency.
(19) Doubts about Hinkley Point have deepened after a detailed report by HSBC’s energy analysts described eight key challenges to the project, which will be built by the state-backed French firm EDF and be part-financed by investment from China .
(20) The Lords will vote on three key amendments: • To exclude child benefit from the cap calculation (this would roughly halve the number of households affected).
Oak
Definition:
(n.) Any tree or shrub of the genus Quercus. The oaks have alternate leaves, often variously lobed, and staminate flowers in catkins. The fruit is a smooth nut, called an acorn, which is more or less inclosed in a scaly involucre called the cup or cupule. There are now recognized about three hundred species, of which nearly fifty occur in the United States, the rest in Europe, Asia, and the other parts of North America, a very few barely reaching the northern parts of South America and Africa. Many of the oaks form forest trees of grand proportions and live many centuries. The wood is usually hard and tough, and provided with conspicuous medullary rays, forming the silver grain.
(n.) The strong wood or timber of the oak.
Example Sentences:
(1) The lesson, spelled out by Oak Creek's mayor, Steve Saffidi, was that it shouldn't have taken a tragedy for Sikhs, or anyone else, to find acceptance.
(2) Poison oak, ivy, and sumac dermatitis is a T-cell-mediated reaction against urushiol, the oil found in the leaf of the plants.
(3) By design these plants are adjacent to the AEC's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and such a location would seem ideal for an experiment on the wedding of nuclear and fossil sources of energy.
(4) The results indicated that the induction phase as well as the maintenance phase did not induce a statistically significant hyposensitivity to urushiol, and we were thus unable to decrease sensitivity to poison ivy and poison oak in humans using orally ingested PDC-HDC diacetate.
(5) The pollen of ash (Fraxinus), oak (Quercus), beech (Fagus) and plane tree (Platanus) was regularly found in high percentages during these years.
(6) The identification of this strain, originally called the Oak Ridge strain, and the establishment of a new species for it were based on morphologic, serologic, and immunochemical studies.
(7) It even had carved oak bears as newel posts on its modest staircase.
(8) At a press conference held outside the temple on Sunday, Oak Creek police chief John Edwards said the "heroic actions" of the two officers "stopped this from being worse than it could have been", noting that many people had gathered for worship at the time of the attack.
(9) It might smell close to pot, he said, but would be “tainted” because of all the other items and plants like poison oak burning along with it.
(10) In previous experiments it was found that birch, beech, alder, hazel and oak are pollens with importance in pathogenesis of early pollinosis in our region of Central Europe.
(11) Changes in IgE to oak, elm, box elder, AgE, and rye grass group I were minimal.
(12) The oak processionary moth, a native of southern and central Europe, has become established in south-west London and parts of the home counties since being found in England in 2006.
(13) It was shown that an increase in the content of 3-OAK-A in the liver during carcinogenesis initiation and progression is accompanied by a decrease in the AA content in this organ.
(14) Leaves collected from the gizzard were identified as coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia).
(15) We contrast two theoretical approaches to social influence, one stressing interpersonal dependence, conceptualized as normative and informational influence (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955), and the other stressing group membership, conceptualized as self-categorization and referent informational influence (Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher & Wetherell, 1987).
(16) Amardeep Singh, of the Sikh Coalition, thanked Oak Creek's citizens for turning out in solidarity.
(17) The ash dieback fungus found in East Anglia last week is just the latest invader to pose a serious threat to UK trees, and government ecologists say that more than 3m larch trees as well as thousands of mature oaks and chestnuts have been felled in the past three years to prevent similar fatal plant diseases from spreading out of control.
(18) Soon he, Oakes and Alan Brien were all sharing an office.
(19) A mystery disease causing Britain's oak trees to "bleed to death" has prompted a £1.1m research effort to identify its cause.
(20) The most active were oak bark, sage and St. John's wort grass WAG extracts, horse radish root and leaf AG extracts, celandine grass WA extract; bur marigold and yarrow grass WA extracts were active towards S. aureus.