MULE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Mule

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noun

Mule n.

1.

(Zool.) A hybrid animal; specifically, one generated between an ass and a mare. Sometimes the term is applied to the offspring of a horse and a she-ass, but that hybrid is more properly termed a hinny. See Hinny. Note: Mules are much used as draught animals. They are hardy, and proverbial for stubbornness.

2.

(Bot.) A plant or vegetable produced by impregnating the pistil of one species with the pollen or fecundating dust of another; called also hybrid.

3.

A very stubborn person.

4.

A machine, used in factories, for spinning cotton, wool, etc., into yarn or thread and winding it into cops; called also jenny and mule-jenny.

5.

A slipper that has no fitting around the heel.

Synonyms: mules, scuff, scuffs.

Mule armadillo (Zool.), a long-eared armadillo (Tatusia hybrida), native of Buenos Ayres; called also mulita.

Mule deer (Zool.), a large deer (Cervus macrotis syn. Cariacus macrotis) of the Western United States. The name refers to its long ears.

Mule pulley (Mach.), an idle pulley for guiding a belt which transmits motion between shafts that are not parallel.

Mule twist, cotton yarn in cops, as spun on a mule; in distinction from yarn spun on a throstle frame.

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Etymology of 'Mule'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Mule" Quotes from Famous Books

... were taking. Her face was built on different lines: a smooth, delicately modeled oval, wide at the temples and level of brow, with heavy dark hair growing low over the sides of the forehead, leaving the center high, and the arch of the head perfect. Trailing along in the rear a small mule followed, bearing a pack. ...

— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine

... unusually handsome lad of five or six, with blue eyes and fair hair, dressed in knickerbockers and a sailor cap, was also keenly interested in the surroundings. It was Saturday, and the little two-wheeled carts, drawn by a steer or a mule; the pigs sleeping in the shadow of the old wooden market-house; the lean and sallow pinelanders and listless negroes dozing on the curbstone, were all objects of novel interest to the boy, as was manifest by ...

— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt

... convent; parties of three attend in it by turns, and are the only Bedouins who are permitted to enter within the walls; but they are never allowed to sleep in the house, and pass the night in the garden. They provide fire-wood, collect dried herbage for the mule which turns the mill, bring milk, eggs, &c. and receive all the offals of the kitchen. Some of them encamp as Bedouins in the mountains surrounding the peaks of Moses and St. Catherine, but the greater part are settled in the gardens belonging to the convent, ...

— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt

... simplest instrument for grinding auriferous quartz. It is a circular bed of stone, from eight to twenty feet in diameter, on which the quartz is ground by a large stone dragged round and round by horse or mule-power. There are two kinds of arastras, the rude or improved. The rude arastra is made with a pavement of unhewn flat stones, which are usually laid down in clay. The pavement of the improved arastra ...

— Hittel on Gold Mines and Mining • John S. Hittell

... communications and lines of retreat in case he should find himself in a position to make a general advance against them. He also recommended most strongly the bearers of the despatch to their care. It was to the chief known as Nunez that they were now bound. The mule train was nominally destined for Vittoria, to which town the leader had got a pass, specifying the number of mules and the nature of the goods they carried, from the French commandant at Alonqua, for no one was allowed to take the goods about the country ...

— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty

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