whisker

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The hair on a man's cheeks and chin.
2. n. A single hair of a beard or mustache.
3. n. One of the long stiff tactile bristles or hairs that grow near the mouth and elsewhere on the head of most mammals; a vibrissa.
4. n. Informal A narrow margin; a hairsbreadth: The candidate lost the election by a whisker.
5. n. Nautical One of two spars or booms projecting from the side of a bowsprit for spreading the jib or flying-jib guys.
6. n. Chemistry An extremely fine filamentary crystal with extraordinary shear strength and unusual electrical or surface properties.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. One who or that which whisks, or moves with a quick, sweeping motion.
2. n. A switch or rod.
3. n. A bunch of feathers for sweeping anything.
4. n. In zoology:
5. n. One of the long, stiff, bristly hairs which grow on the upper lip of the cat and many other animals; a vibrissa; a feeler; also, the set of such hairs on either side of the mouth. See vibrissa, and cuts under Platyrhynchus and tiger.
6. n. plural Any similar formation of hairs, feathers, etc., about an animal's mouth; also, color-marks suggestive of whiskers, as mystacial or maxillary stripes. See whiskered.
7. n. In entomology, a long fringe of hairs on the clypeus, overhanging the mouth, as in flies of the genus Asilus.
8. n. The hair of the face, especially that on the sides of the face or cheeks of a man, as distinguished from that which grows on the upper lip (called the mustache) and that on the chin (called the beard), but the word was formerly also used for the hair on the upper lip: commonly in the plural. Compare side-whiskers.
9. n. In ships, an outrigger of wood or iron extending laterally from each side of the bowsprit-cap, serving to support the jib and flying-jib guys.
10. n. Something great or extraordinary; a whopper; a big lie.
11. n. A blusterer.

Wiktionary

1. n. That part of the beard which grows upon the sides of the face, usually of the male, or upon the chin, or upon both.
2. n. A hair of the beard.
3. n. One of the long, projecting hairs growing at the sides of the mouth of a cat, or other animal.
4. n. colloquial The (very small) distance between two things
5. n. nautical spreaders from the bows to spread the bowsprit shrouds.
6. n. statistics a graphic element that shows the maxima and minima in a box plot
7. n. One who, or that which, whisks, or moves with a quick, sweeping motion.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. One who, or that which, whisks, or moves with a quick, sweeping motion.
2. n. Formerly, the hair of the upper lip; a mustache; -- usually in the plural.
3. n. That part of the beard which grows upon the sides of the face, or upon the chin, or upon both
4. n. A hair of the beard.
5. n. One of the long, projecting hairs growing at the sides of the mouth of a cat, or other animal.
6. n. (Naut.) Iron rods extending on either side of the bowsprit, to spread, or guy out, the stays, etc.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a long stiff hair growing from the snout or brow of most mammals as e.g. a cat
2. v. furnish with whiskers
3. n. a very small distance or space