splint

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A thin piece split off from a larger piece; a splinter.
2. n. A rigid device used to prevent motion of a joint or of the ends of a fractured bone.
3. n. A dental appliance put on the teeth to protect them from grinding or from moving out of place.
4. n. A thin, flexible wooden strip, such as one used in the making of baskets or chair bottoms.
5. n. A plate or strip of metal.
6. n. A bony enlargement of the cannon bone or splint bone of a horse.
7. v. To support or restrict with or as if with a splint.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. To splinter; shiver.
2. To join together, confine, or support by means of splints, as a broken limb.
3. n. A piece of wood or other substance split off; a splinter.
4. n. A thin flexible strip of wood (or metal) adapted to a particular use. Specifically— One of a number of strips woven together to make chair-seats, baskets, etc.
5. n. In anatomy, a bone acting as a splint; a splint-bone.
6. n. In farriery: Periostitis in the horse, involving the inner small and the large metacarpal or cannon-bone, rarely also the corresponding metatarsal bones. It is caused mainly by concussion, and sometimes leads to lameness.
7. n. An exostosis of the splint-bone of a horse; a bony callus or excrescence on a horse's leg formed by periostitis of a splint-bone.
8. n. Alburnum or sap-wood.
9. n. A variety of bituminous coal which is of a dull, stony luster and breaks in slab-like masses; splint-coal. It is contrasted with the shining variety or glance-coal, which breaks in cubes and which is often strongly coking, whereas splint-coal is not.

Wiktionary

1. n. A narrow strip of wood split or peeled off of a larger piece.
2. n. medicine A device to immobilize a body part.
3. n. A dental device applied consequent to undergoing orthodontia.
4. n. A segment of armor.
5. n. A bone found on either side of the horse's cannon bone; second or fourth metacarpal (forelimb) or metatarsal (hindlimb) bone.
6. v. transitive To apply a splint to; to fasten with splints.
7. v. To support one's abdomen with hands or a pillow before attempting to cough.
8. v. obsolete, rare, transitive To split into thin, slender pieces; to splinter.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A piece split off; a splinter.
2. n. (Surg.) A thin piece of wood, or other substance, used to keep in place, or protect, an injured part, especially a broken bone when set.
3. n. (Anat.) A splint bone.
4. n. (Far.) A disease affecting the splint bones, as a callosity or hard excrescence.
5. n. (Anc. Armor.) One of the small plates of metal used in making splint armor. See Splint armor, below.
6. n. Splint, or splent, coal. See Splent coal, under Splent.
7. v. Obs. or R. To split into splints, or thin, slender pieces; to splinter; to shiver.
8. v. rare To fasten or confine with splints, as a broken limb. See Splint, n., 2.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. an orthopedic mechanical device used to immobilize and protect a part of the body (as a broken leg)
2. v. support with a splint
3. n. a thin sliver of wood