milk

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A whitish liquid containing proteins, fats, lactose, and various vitamins and minerals that is produced by the mammary glands of all mature female mammals after they have given birth and serves as nourishment for their young.
2. n. The milk of cows, goats, or other animals, used as food by humans.
3. n. A liquid, such as coconut milk, milkweed sap, plant latex, or various medical emulsions, that is similar to milk in appearance.
4. v. To draw milk from the teat or udder of (a female mammal).
5. v. To draw or extract a liquid from: milked the stem for its last drops of sap.
6. v. To press out, drain off, or remove by or as if by milking: milk venom from a snake.
7. v. Informal To draw out or extract something from, as if by milking: milked the witness for information.
8. v. Informal To obtain money or benefits from, in order to achieve personal gain; exploit: "The dictator and his cronies had milked their country of somewhere between $5 billion and $10 billion” ( Russell Watson).
9. v. To yield or supply milk.
10. v. To draw milk from a female mammal.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A white or bluish-white liquid secreted by the mammary glands of the females of the class Mammalia, and drawn from their breasts for the nourishment of their young. It is opaque, with a slight peculiar odor and a bland sweetish taste. Its chemical constituents in different mammals are qualitatively alike, but quantitatively vary much, not only in different species, but also in different individuals, or even at different times in the same individual. The amount of water varies from about 80 to 90 per cent., the residue being composed of albuminoids (casein and lactopro-tein), fat, milk-sugar, and certain salts, chiefly phosphates. Under the microscope it appears as a clear transparent fluid, in which a large number of minute globules are suspended. When allowed rorest, these globules rise to the surface, forming a yellowish stratum, the cream, which consists main-ly of the fat, mixed with some casein, and retaining some serum. In the cow about 5 per cent. of the milk is cream, in the human female less, in the mare scarcely more than 1 per cent. By churning, the globules unite to form butter, leaving the buttermilk, which is essentially a solution of milk-sugar, with the salts and some casein and butter. The milk from which cream is separated is skimmed milk, which when left to itself (if not too cold) develops, from the action of a certain bacterium, lactic acid, which separates the casein in a coagulated condition called curds; the same effect is produced by some other acids, and by rennet, the prepared inner membrane of the stomach of a calf. The liquid separated from the coagulum is called whey, and contains chiefly milk-sugar and some salts. Cheese is prepared by coagulating milk with rennet, allowing the whey to separate, and adding salt to the curd. The specific gravity of both cow's and human milk is about 1.030. Human milk is always alkaline, cow's milk either alkaline or acid, while the milk of carnivora is always acid. Milk represents a complete or typical food, in which all the constituents necessary for maintaining the life and growth of the body are present. In rare instances milk, in greater or less abundance, is secreted by the mammary glands of the adult human male.
2. n. Anything resembling milk in appearance, taste, etc., as the juice of the cocoanut and the sap of certain plants (see latex).
3. n. The spat before it is discharged from an oyster.
4. n. A slight cloudy opacity occurring in some diamonds.
5. n. Milk which has undergone a special fermentation caused by a microbe, Bacterium cyanoyenum, which causes it to assume a blue color.
6. To press or draw milk from the breasts or udders of: as, to milk a cow.
7. To suck.
8. Figuratively, to drain the contents or the strength from: exhaust gradually: as, to milk a friend's purse; the soil has been milked of its fertility.
9. In racing slang, to bet against, as an owner against his horse when the horse is to be withdrawn, or cannot win, or is not to be allowed to win.
10. In telegraphy, to draw part of the current from (a wire) through an instrument without cutting the wire; read a message by placing an induction apparatus close to (the wire).
11. To supply with milk; feed with milk.
12. n. An emulsion; any liquid which holds small particles of solid matter in suspension.

Wiktionary

1. n. uncountable A white liquid produced by the mammary glands of female mammals to nourish their young. From certain animals, especially cows, it is a common food for humans as a beverage or used to produce various dairy products such as butter, cheese, and yogurt.
2. n. uncountable A white (or whitish) colored liquid obtained from a vegetable source such as soy beans, coconuts, almonds, rice, oats. Also called non-dairy milk.
3. n. countable, informal An individual serving of milk.
4. n. uncountable, slang semen
5. v. transitive To express milk from (a mammal, especially a cow).
6. v. transitive To express any liquid (from any creature).
7. v. transitive To talk or write at length about (a particular point).
8. v. transitive To take advantage of (a situation).

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Physiol.) A white fluid secreted by the mammary glands of female mammals for the nourishment of their young, consisting of minute globules of fat suspended in a solution of casein, albumin, milk sugar, and inorganic salts.
2. n. (Bot.) A kind of juice or sap, usually white in color, found in certain plants; latex. See Latex.
3. n. An emulsion made by bruising seeds.
4. n. (Zoöl.) The ripe, undischarged spat of an oyster.
5. v. To draw or press milk from the breasts or udder of, by the hand or mouth; to withdraw the milk of.
6. v. To draw from the breasts or udder; to extract, as milk.
7. v. To draw anything from, as if by milking; to compel to yield profit or advantage; to plunder.
8. v. To draw or to yield milk.
9. v. (Elec.) To give off small gas bubbles during the final part of the charging operation; -- said of a storage battery.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. produced by mammary glands of female mammals for feeding their young
2. n. a white nutritious liquid secreted by mammals and used as food by human beings
3. v. add milk to
4. n. a river that rises in the Rockies in northwestern Montana and flows eastward to become a tributary of the Missouri River
5. v. exploit as much as possible
6. v. take milk from female mammals
7. n. any of several nutritive milklike liquids