| siege | 1. A seat; especially, a royal seat; a throne. "Upon the very siege of justice." "A stately siege of sovereign majesty, And thereon sat a woman gorgeous gay." (Spenser) "In our great hall there stood a vacant chair . . . And Merlin called it "The siege perilous."" (Tennyson) 2. Hence, place or situation; seat. "Ah! traitorous eyes, come out of your shameless siege forever." (Painter (Palace of Pleasure)) 3. Rank; grade; station; estimation. "I fetch my life and being From men of royal siege." (Shak) 4. Passage of excrements; stool; faecal matter. "The siege of this mooncalf." (Shak) 5. The sitting of an army around or before a fortified place for the purpose of compelling the garrison to surrender; the surrounding or investing of a place by an army, and approaching it by passages and advanced works, which cover the besiegers from the enemy's fire. See the Note under Blockade. 6. Hence, a continued attempt to gain possession. "Love stood the siege, and would not yield his breast." (Dryden) 7. The floor of a glass-furnace. 8. A workman's bench. Siege gun, a heavy gun for siege operations. Siege train, artillery adapted for attacking fortified places. Origin: OE. Sege, OF. Siege, F. Siege a seat, a siege; cf. It. Seggia, seggio, zedio, a seat, asseggio, assedio, a siege, F. Assieger to besiege, It. & LL. Assediare, L. Obsidium a siege, besieging; all ultimately fr. L. Sedere to sit. See Sit, and cf. See. Source: Websters Dictionary (01 Mar 1998) |
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| Siegert | Ferdinand, German paediatrician, 1865-1946. See: Siegert's sign. (05 Mar 2000) |
| Siegert's sign | <clinical sign> Shortness and inward curvature of the terminal phalanges of the fifth fingers in Down's syndrome. (05 Mar 2000) |
| Siegle | Emil, German otologist, 1833-1900. See: Siegle's otoscope. (05 Mar 2000) |
| siemens | The SI unit of electrical conductance; the conductance of a body with an electrical resistance of 1 ohm, allowing 1 ampere of current to flow per volt applied; equal to 1 mho. Synonym: mho. Abbreviation: S Origin: Sir William Siemens, Ger. Born British engineer, 1823-1883 (05 Mar 2000) |
| Siemens, Hermann Werner | <person> German dermatologist, 1891-1969. See: Christ-Siemens-Touraine syndrome. (05 Mar 2000) |
| siemens-martin process | See Open-hearth process, etc, under Open. Source: Websters Dictionary (01 Mar 1998) |
| sienite | <chemical> See Syenite. Source: Websters Dictionary (01 Mar 1998) |
| sienna | <chemistry> Clay that is coloured red or brown by the oxides of iron or manganese, and used as a pigment. It is used either in the raw state or burnt. Burnt sienna, sienna made of a much redder colour by the action of fire. Raw sienna, sienna in its natural state, of a transparent yellowish brown colour. Origin: It. Terra di Siena, fr. Siena in Italy. Source: Websters Dictionary (01 Mar 1998) |
| sierra leone | A republic in western africa, south of guinea and west of liberia. Its capital is freetown. Its coast was first visited by the portuguese in 1462, later by english slave traders. In 1787 english philanthropists sponsored settlements on the coast for runaway and freed slaves. After a clash with the french in 1893 the region was acquired by treaty in 1895, proclaimed a protectorate in 1896, and achieved independence in 1961. The name is from the spanish sierra (mountain chain) + leone (lion), meaning lion mountains, which refers not to the roar of lions (they are not found in this part of africa) but to the noise from claps of thunder from storm clouds constantly surrounding the mountains. (12 Dec 1998) |
| sieva | <botany> A small variety of the Lima bean (Phaseolus lunatus). Source: Websters Dictionary (01 Mar 1998) |
| sieve | 1. A utensil for separating the finer and coarser parts of a pulverized or granulated substance from each other. It consist of a vessel, usually shallow, with the bottom perforated, or made of hair, wire, or the like, woven in meshes. "In a sieve thrown and sifted." 2. A kind of coarse basket. <botany> Sieve cells, cribriform cells. See Cribriform. Origin: OE. Sive, AS. Sife; akin to D. Zeef, zift, OHG. Sib, G. Sieb. A. Cf. Sift. Source: Websters Dictionary (01 Mar 1998) |
| sieve bone | A horizontal lamina from which are suspended the labyrinth, on either side, and the lamina perpendicularis in the centre; it fits into the ethmoidal notch of the frontal bone and supports the olfactory lobes of the cerebrum, being pierced with numerous openings for the passage of the olfactory nerves. Synonym: lamina cribrosa ossis ethmoidalis, cribrum, sieve bone, sieve plate. (05 Mar 2000) |
| sieve graft | An obsolete term for a full-thickness skin graft taken after cutting multiple holes in it with a circular punch, thus leaving islands of skin in the donor area to heal it. (05 Mar 2000) |
| sieve plate | Perforated end walls separating the component cells (sieve elements) that make up the phloem sieve tubes in vascular plants. The perforations permit the flow of water and dissolved organic solutes along the tube and are lined with callose. The plates are readily blocked by further deposition of callose when the sieve tube is stressed or damaged. (18 Nov 1997) |