cork

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The lightweight elastic outer bark of the cork oak, used especially for bottle closures, insulation, floats, and crafts.
2. n. Something made of cork, especially a bottle stopper.
3. n. A bottle stopper made of other material, such as plastic.
4. n. A small float used on a fishing line or net to buoy up the line or net or to indicate when a fish bites.
5. n. Botany A nonliving, water-resistant protective tissue that is formed on the outside of the cork cambium in the woody stems and roots of many seed plants. Also called phellem.
6. v. To stop or seal with or as if with a cork.
7. v. To restrain or check; hold back: tried to cork my anger.
8. v. To blacken with burnt cork.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A species of oak, Quercus Suber, growing in the south of Europe (especially in Spain and Portugal) and in the north of Africa, having a thick, rough bark, for the sake of which it is often planted. It grows to the height of from 20 to 40 feet, and yields bark every 6 to 10 years for 150 years.
2. n. ‐2. The outer bark of this oak, which is very light and elastic, and is used for many purposes, especially for stoppers for bottles and casks, for artificial legs, for inner soles of shoes, for floats of nets, etc. It grows to a thickness of one or two inches, and after removal is replaced by a gradual annual growth from the original cork cambium. Burnt cork or Spanish black is used as an artists' pigment, and was formerly employed in medicine. Finely powdered cork has been used as an absorbent, under the name of suberin.
3. n. In botany, a constituent of the bark of most phænogamous plants, especially of dicotyledons. It constitutes the inner growing layer known as cork cambium, cork meristem, or phellogen, the outer dead portion constituting the bulk of the bark. (See bark.) It may also occur within the stem itself, and is often formed in the repair of wounds in plants.
4. n. Something made of cork. Specifically — A cork heel or sole in a shoe.
5. n. A stopper or bung for a bottle, cask, or other vessel, cut out of cork; also, by extension, a stopper made of some other substance: as, a rubber cork. A small float of cork used by anglers to buoy up their fishing-lines or to indicate when a fish bites or nibbles; by extension, any such float, even when not made of cork.
6. Made of or with cork; consisting wholly or chiefly of cork.
7. To stop or bung with a piece of cork, as a bottle or cask; confine or make fast with a cork.
8. To stop or check as if with a cork, as a person speaking; silence suddenly or effectually: generally with up: as, this poser corked him up; cork (yourself) up.
9. To blacken with burnt cork, as the face, to represent a negro.
10. n. A bristle; in the plural, bristles; beard.
11. n. A corruption of calk.
12. n. The name given in the Highlands of Scotland to the lichen Lecanora tartarea, yielding a crimson or purple dye. See cudbear.
13. n. plural A game played with corks colored differently on the sides and so trimmed that they may fall either way, the players betting on whether the majority thrown will fall red or black. Sometimes called props.
14. n. In France and Belgium, a game, a mixture of quoits and bowls.
15. n. A variety of skittle-pool.
16. In currying, to grain.

Wiktionary

1. n. uncountable The bark of the cork oak, which is very light and porous and used for making bottle stoppers, flotation devices, and insulation material.
2. n. A bottle stopper made from this or any other material.
3. n. An angling float, also traditionally made of oak cork.
4. n. The cork oak.
5. n. botany The tissue that grows from the cork cambium.
6. v. transitive To seal or stop up, especially with a cork stopper.
7. v. transitive To blacken (as) with a burnt cork
8. v. To leave the cork in a bottle after attempting to uncork it.
9. v. slang To be quiet.
10. v. To fill with cork, as the center of a baseball bat.
11. v. transitive, Australia To injure through a blow; to induce a haematoma.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The outer layer of the bark of the cork tree (Quercus Suber), of which stoppers for bottles and casks are made. See cutose.
2. n. A stopper for a bottle or cask, cut out of cork.
3. n. A mass of tabular cells formed in any kind of bark, in greater or less abundance.
4. v. To stop with a cork, as a bottle.
5. v. To furnish or fit with cork; to raise on cork.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. stuff with cork
2. n. (botany) outer tissue of bark; a protective layer of dead cells
3. n. a small float usually made of cork; attached to a fishing line
4. n. outer bark of the cork oak; used for stoppers for bottles etc.
5. v. close a bottle with a cork
6. n. the plug in the mouth of a bottle (especially a wine bottle)
7. n. a port city in southern Ireland