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BENDS
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Pain resulting from rapid change in pressure
Synonyms:
aeroembolism; air embolism; bends; caisson disease; decompression sickness; gas embolism
Classified under:
Nouns denoting stable states of affairs
Hypernyms ("bends" is a kind of...):
illness; malady; sickness; unwellness (impairment of normal physiological function affecting part or all of an organism)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
Present simple (third person singular) of the verb bend
Context examples:
He bends his head over, so, to look well at the bones, and then Bidarshik strikes him hard on the head, with axe, once, so, and the strange white man kicks and is dead.
(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)
To women who please me only by their faces, I am the very devil when I find out they have neither souls nor hearts—when they open to me a perspective of flatness, triviality, and perhaps imbecility, coarseness, and ill-temper: but to the clear eye and eloquent tongue, to the soul made of fire, and the character that bends but does not break—at once supple and stable, tractable and consistent—I am ever tender and true.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
All is still: he again advances: he bends above her; a light veil rests on her features: he lifts it, bends lower; now his eyes anticipate the vision of beauty—warm, and blooming, and lovely, in rest.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
