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MAZE
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Complex system of paths or tunnels in which it is easy to get lost
Synonyms:
labyrinth; maze
Classified under:
Nouns denoting man-made objects
Hypernyms ("maze" is a kind of...):
system (instrumentality that combines interrelated interacting artifacts designed to work as a coherent entity)
Instance hyponyms:
Labyrinth of Minos (a vast labyrinth built in Crete by Daedalus at the command of Minos in order to contain the Minotaur)
Derivation:
mazy (resembling a labyrinth in form or complexity)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Something jumbled or confused
Example:
a tangle of government regulations
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents
Hypernyms ("maze" is a kind of...):
perplexity (trouble or confusion resulting from complexity)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
Present simple (first person singular and plural, second person singular and plural, third person plural) of the verb maze
Context examples:
Latuya Bay called loudest, so that the summer of 1898 found him and his wife threading the mazes of the broken coast-line in seventy-foot Siwash canoes.
(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)
He was appalled at the vast edifice of etiquette, and lost himself in the mazes of visiting-card conduct between persons in polite society.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
Gentlemen, said Mr. Micawber, when the shadow of that iron-work on the summit of the brick structure has been reflected on the gravel of the Parade, I have seen my children thread the mazes of the intricate pattern, avoiding the dark marks.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
To test that idea, they examined brain activity during NREM sleep in rats trained to locate rewards in a maze and in rats that explored the maze in a random fashion.
(Study shows how memories ripple through the brain, National Institutes of Health)
"Sharp-wave ripple abundance predicts how quickly a mouse can learn and memorize how to get through a maze, and short gamma power predicts how accurate that memory will be."
(Predicting Alzheimer's-like memory loss before it strikes, National Science Foundation)
One mast was broken short off, six or eight feet from the deck, and lay over the side, entangled in a maze of sail and rigging; and all that ruin, as the ship rolled and beat—which she did without a moment's pause, and with a violence quite inconceivable—beat the side as if it would stave it in.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
I was so sensitively aware, indeed, of being younger than I could have wished, that for some time I could not make up my mind to pass her at all, under the ignoble circumstances of the case; but, hearing her there with a broom, stood peeping out of window at King Charles on horseback, surrounded by a maze of hackney-coaches, and looking anything but regal in a drizzling rain and a dark-brown fog, until I was admonished by the waiter that the gentleman was waiting for me.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
