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Wattle   /wˈɑtəl/   Listen
noun
Wattle  n.  
1.
A twig or flexible rod; hence, a hurdle made of such rods. "And there he built with wattles from the marsh A little lonely church in days of yore."
2.
A rod laid on a roof to support the thatch.
3.
(Zool.)
(a)
A naked fleshy, and usually wrinkled and highly colored, process of the skin hanging from the chin or throat of a bird or reptile.
(b)
Barbel of a fish.
4.
(a)
The astringent bark of several Australian trees of the genus Acacia, used in tanning; called also wattle bark.
5.
Material consisting of wattled twigs, withes, etc., used for walls, fences, and the like. "The pailsade of wattle."
6.
(Bot.) In Australasia, any tree of the genus Acacia; so called from the wattles, or hurdles, which the early settlers made of the long, pliable branches or of the split stems of the slender species. The bark of such trees is also called wattle. See also Savanna wattle, under Savanna.
Wattle turkey. (Zool.) Same as Brush turkey.



verb
Wattle  v. t.  (past & past part. wattled; pres. part. wattling)  
1.
To bind with twigs.
2.
To twist or interweave, one with another, as twigs; to form a network with; to plat; as, to wattle branches.
3.
To form, by interweaving or platting twigs. "The folded flocks, penned in their wattled cotes."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Wattle" Quotes from Famous Books



... went white and red by turns, his nose flushing and paling like the wattle of an angry turkey; and he stammered out that he hoped M. de Radisson did not take umbrage at the building of ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut

... generic names, its extreme poverty in such is unquestionable. Similarly with the Tasmanians. Dr. Milligan says they "had acquired very limited powers of abstraction or generalization. They possessed no words representing abstract ideas; for each variety of gum-tree and wattle-tree, etc., etc., they had a name, but they had no equivalent for the expression, 'a tree;' neither could they express abstract qualities, such as hard, soft, warm, cold, long, short, round, etc.; for 'hard,' they would say 'like a stone;' for 'tall,' they would say 'long legs,' etc.; ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... when the traitor walked towards him, and stealing on silently when his back was turned, the young sailor managed to ensconce himself unseen in the rough little wattle shed made by his own hands for the shelter of his patient, when a snow-storm had visited the valley of the Canche last winter. Nothing could be better fitted for his present purpose, inasmuch as his lurking-place could ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... was my pleasure to find a night's entertainment, and nowhere, except in my own home, have I ever been treated with more courtesy than that which was extended to me, a perfect stranger, in scores of daub and wattle cottages in the Free State and the Transvaal. I will not declare that every Boer is a saint, or that every one is a model of cleanliness or virtue, but I make bold to say that the majority of the Boers are not a fraction less moral, ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas

... never been invented. The more it saves in time and gains in space, the greater and the more general is the disaster that it may cause; for it is made to catch fire, like torches. It seems better, therefore, to spend on walls of burnt brick, and be at expense, than to save with "wattle and daub," and be in danger. And, in the stucco covering, too, it makes cracks from the inside by the arrangement of its studs and girts. For these swell with moisture as they are daubed, and then contract as they ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius


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