notch

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A V-shaped cut.
2. n. Such a cut used for keeping a record.
3. n. A narrow pass between mountains.
4. n. Informal A level or degree: a notch or two higher in quality.
5. v. To cut a notch in.
6. v. To record by or as if by making notches: notched the score on a stick.
7. v. Informal To achieve; score: notched 30 wins in a single season.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A nick or indentation; a small hollow or nick cut or sunk in anything, as in the end of an arrow for the reception of the bowstring.
2. n. In carpentry, a hollow cut in the face of a piece of timber for the reception of another piece.
3. n. A narrow defile or passage between mountains; or, more properly, the entrance to such a defile, when it is nearly closed by precipices or walls of rock on either hand. The word is apparently limited in use to the region of the White Mountains in New Hampshire and of the Adirondacks, and has nearly the same meaning as gap in the central parts of the Appalachian range.
4. n. A step or degree; a grade.
5. n. A point in the game of cricket.
6. n. In zoology and anatomy, an incision or incisure; an emargination: as, the interclavicular notch, the depression over the breast-bone between the prominent ends of the clavicles.
7. n. In armor, the bouche of a shield.
8. n. The large notch of the maxilla that forms the lateral and lower boundary of the entrance to the nasal cavity.
9. To cut a notch or notches in; indent; nick; hack; as, to notch a stick.
10. To place in a notch; fit to a string by the notch, as an arrow.
11. In cricket, to mark or score; have as score the number of.
12. n. The posterior or lower angle, formed by the meeting of the pubic bones. Same as pubic arch.
13. n. Same as undercut, 2.
14. To make an undercut in (a tree) preparatory to felling (it). Also undercut.

Wiktionary

1. n. A V-shaped cut.
2. n. Such a cut, used for keeping a record
3. n. An indentation.
4. n. A mountain pass; a defile
5. n. informal A level or degree.
6. v. transitive To cut a notch in (something).
7. v. transitive To record (a score or similar) by making notches on something.
8. v. transitive To join by means of notches.
9. v. : (transitive) To achieve (something).

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A hollow cut in anything; a nick; an indentation.
2. n. A narrow passage between two elevations; a deep, close pass; a defile.
3. v. To cut or make notches in; to indent; also, to score by notches.
4. v. To fit the notch of (an arrow) to the string.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. cut or make a notch into
2. n. a V-shaped indentation
3. v. notch a surface to record something
4. n. the location in a range of mountains of a geological formation that is lower than the surrounding peaks
5. n. a small cut
6. n. a V-shaped or U-shaped indentation carved or scratched into a surface