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In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government ought to be instructed... No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people. Preface to 1828 Dictionary
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BULB, n. [L. bulbus, a bulb or round root.] A round body, applied to many objects. But in botany, it is appropriately a bud formed under ground, upon or near the roots of certain herbaceous plants, which are hence called bulbous plants, as the tulip, onion and lily. The bulb under ground is what the bud is upon the stem or branches, a hybernacle or winter receptacle of a future plant, containing the plant in embryo, covered with a bark or rind, generally consisting of scales placed over each other, to defend the tender rudiments of the plant from cold and other external injuries. A bulb is scaly in the lily, solid in the tulip, coated in the onion, and jointed in the tuberous moschatel.
BULB, v.i. To bulb out is to project or be protuberant. [Little used.]
A spheroidal body growing from a plant either above or below the
ground (usually below), which is strictly a bud, consisting of a
cluster of partially developed leaves, and producing, as it grows, a stem
above, and roots below, as in the onion, tulip, etc. It differs from a
corm in not being solid.
A name given to some parts that
resemble in shape certain bulbous roots; as, the bulb of the
aorta.
Bulb of the eye, the eyeball. -- Bulb of a hair, the "root," or part whence the hair originates. -- Bulb of the spinal cord, the medulla oblongata, often called simply bulb. -- Bulb of a tooth, the vascular and nervous papilla contained in the cavity of the tooth. An expansion or protuberance on a stem or tube,
as the bulb of a thermometer, which may be of any form, as spherical,
cylindrical, curved, etc.
Tomlinson. To take the shape of a bulb;
to swell.
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