(v. t.) To seize and bear away by force; to snatch away; to carry off.
(v. t.) To strip; to rob; to pillage.
(v. t.) To raffle.
(v. i.) To raffle.
(n.) A gun, the inside of whose barrel is grooved with spiral channels, thus giving the ball a rotary motion and insuring greater accuracy of fire. As a military firearm it has superseded the musket.
(n.) A body of soldiers armed with rifles.
(n.) A strip of wood covered with emery or a similar material, used for sharpening scythes.
(v. t.) To grove; to channel; especially, to groove internally with spiral channels; as, to rifle a gun barrel or a cannon.
(v. t.) To whet with a rifle. See Rifle, n., 3.
Example Sentences:
(1) He's Billy no-mates with a Heckler & Koch sniper-rifle, drowning in loneliness, booze and depression.
(2) A tall young Border Police officer stopped me, his rifle cradled in his arms.
(3) Types of weapons involved included handguns (48%), shotguns (22%), rifles (17%), unspecified weapon (12%), and air rifle (1%).
(4) Snipers fired from rooftops, and plainclothes Saleh supporters armed with automatic rifles, swords and batons attacked the protesters.
(5) Sky News has apologised profusely after one of its presenters was shown rifling through the personal belongings of a stricken passenger at the MH17 crash site.
(6) Deaths due to air rifles are extremely rare; only four other cases were found in the recent English-language literature.
(8) The drug was administered from a distance by means of a projectile syringe shot from a special rifle.
(9) We sampled a sawn-off shotgun and an assault rifle, but cops do get tasers and tear gas to add some urban flavour.
(10) Armed with an assault rifle, he then allegedly headed into two poor villages in Kandahar province, the Taliban's heartland, and went on a murderous rampage in which six people were also injured.
(11) District head Baba Abba Hassan said most victims are children, women and elderly people who could not run fast enough when insurgents drove into Baga, firing rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles on town residents.
(12) Officers took up positions on rooftops and along railroad tracks and scanned the terrain through rifle scopes and binoculars.
(13) That proposal, similar to a Senate measure backed by the National Rifle Association, would let the attorney general delay a gun purchase by a suspected terrorist for three days, and let law enforcement officials ask a judge to block the purchase altogether.
(14) It can also be seen as a comment on the NSA debate, with Samantha gleefully rifling through Theodore's emails.
(15) Two men in a car tried to drive into the parking lot, jumped out with automatic rifles.
(16) A Royal Military police officer who was attached to the Rifles regiment, Pritchard had been put on duty at an observation post in the Sangin area of Helmand province, where the Taliban had fought hard for control.
(17) And with every heartbeat the blood was pumping up in the air from my thigh.” A man pointed a rifle at his head and threatened to finish him off.
(18) Via al-Aan correspondent Jenan Moussa: Jenan Moussa (@jenanmoussa) I asked a rebel sniper in #Syria : Drop ur rifle for a day & document life through lens of a camera.
(19) Heller called Bundy’s militia supporters, many of whom had trained semi-automatic rifles on government rangers during the stand-off, “patriots”; now his spokesman is saying that the senator “completely disagrees with Mr Bundy’s appalling and racist statements”.
(20) ", but nothing helped, there was so much other noise – both the helicopter above us and the bastard's rifle.
Sharpen
Definition:
(a.) To make sharp.
(a.) To give a keen edge or fine point to; to make sharper; as, to sharpen an ax, or the teeth of a saw.
(a.) To render more quick or acute in perception; to make more ready or ingenious.
(a.) To make more eager; as, to sharpen men's desires.
(a.) To make more pungent and intense; as, to sharpen a pain or disease.
(a.) To make biting, sarcastic, or severe.
(a.) To render more shrill or piercing.
(a.) To make more tart or acid; to make sour; as, the rays of the sun sharpen vinegar.
(a.) To raise, as a sound, by means of a sharp; to apply a sharp to.
(v. i.) To grow or become sharp.
Example Sentences:
(1) This paper employs a rhetorical form designed to clarify and sharpen the focus of the very special stance required--which must be painstakingly learned under careful supervision--in order to effectively tune in to communications coming from the unconscious of the patient.
(2) Although not all reported unconventional applications of antimicrobial agents remain in use, sharpening awareness of their multifaceted actions should encourage broader understanding of all agents traditionally confined to specific uses.
(3) The surprise return of Saleh last month, after recovering in Saudi Arabia from an assassination attempt, has plunged the country into deeper uncertainty and sharpened the differences between pro- and anti-government camps.
(4) Ear-piercing techniques include needles, safety pins, sharpened studs, and self-piercing kits.
(5) The factory sharpened scalers exhibited metallic extensions from the lateral surface (wire edges).
(6) Disruption of visual activity, either by blocking activity with intraocular tetrodotoxin (TTX; Schmidt and Edwards, 1983) or by synchronizing activity with strobe illumination (Schmidt and Eisele, 1985), disrupts the sharpening process: the map is correctly oriented but the multiunit receptive fields at each point average 25-40 degrees in diameter.
(7) NaOH or 1 M acetate buffer at pH 6.0 sharpened e.p.r.
(8) The addition of 1 mM MgATP leads to a sharpening of the length distribution around 1.5 micron without change in the 16 nm diameter.
(9) During this period, the intensity of transcription in presomitic and somitic mesoderm declines relative to that in the overlying neural ectoderm, and the transcription boundary within the presumptive hindbrain region sharpens.
(10) The overall sense is of YouTube sharpening its focus on its most popular content, both in terms of individual channels and entire categories.
(11) The day before the murder you Adebolajo bought five knives and a knife sharpener – which you used to sharpen some of the knives in preparation for their use in the murder.
(12) The sharpening dispute over the Senkaku islands, known as Diaoyu in China , is the most recent product of this old narrative of violence, hatred, fear and grief that continues, sporadically, to obstruct both nations in their efforts to forge a more stable, trusting relationship.
(13) Hagan himself used to work in the car industry, and brought a similar shift operation and level of automation to the housing factory to sharpen up the process.
(14) Jam is often used but this can make it too sweet – if you do use jam try mixing in a little lemon juice to sharpen things up.
(15) By the time the latest spat came before the FCC, Karr argues, net activists had sharpened their tactics and raised their game.
(16) To improve the definitions, eliminate overlapping diagnostic categories, and sharpen the fuzzy boundaries that contribute substantially to limited reproducibility, we suggest: (1) the categories of astrocytoma nos, fibrillary astrocytoma, and protoplasmic astrocytoma be collapsed into a single category of astrocytoma; (2) the diagnostic category of desmoplastic medulloblastoma be combined with medulloblastoma; and (3) the criteria for anaplasia should be further refined to include quantification of critical histologic features, e.g., agreed upon operational definitions for amount of cell density, number of mitoses and pleomorphism for anaplastic astrocytoma and anaplastic ependymoma.
(17) Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let’s use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy and remind ourselves of all the ways that our hopes and dreams are bound together … If this tragedy prompts reflection and debate – as it should – let’s make sure it’s worthy of those we have lost.
(18) When sharpened with citrus and lubricated with olive oil, this is a real delight.
(19) His friend Dingle Foot drafted an editorial that David then sharpened up, inserting phrases that summed up his outlook: 'We had not realised that our government was capable of such folly and crookedness...It is no longer possible to bomb countries because you fear that your trading interests will be harmed...this new feeling for the sanctity of human life is the best element in the modern world.'
(20) The temperature profiles of turbidity (TP tau) of the cyclododecapeptide are analogous to those of the polyhexapeptide where increases in concentration lead to translations of the profiles to lower temperature without sharpening of the transition.