The Collaborative International Dictionary
Cord \Cord\ (k[^o]rd), n. [F. corde, L. chorda catgut, chord, cord, fr. Gr. chordh`; cf. chola`des intestines, L. haruspex soothsayer (inspector of entrails), Icel. g["o]rn, pl. garnir gut, and E. yarn. Cf. Chord, Yarn.]
A string, or small rope, composed of several strands twisted together.
A solid measure, equivalent to 128 cubic feet; a pile of wood, or other coarse material, eight feet long, four feet high, and four feet broad; -- originally measured with a cord or line.
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Fig.: Any moral influence by which persons are caught, held, or drawn, as if by a cord; an enticement; as, the cords of the wicked; the cords of sin; the cords of vanity.
The knots that tangle human creeds, The wounding cords that bind and strain The heart until it bleeds.
--Tennyson. (Anat.) Any structure having the appearance of a cord, esp. a tendon or a nerve. See under Spermatic, Spinal, Umbilical, Vocal.
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(Mus.) See Chord. [Obs.]
Cord wood, wood for fuel cut to the length of four feet (when of full measure).
Usage examples of "cord wood".
By that time most of the year's rence will have been cut, and great stocks of rence paper, gathered in rolls like cord wood and covered with woven rence mats, will have been prepared.
Inclement weather prevented him from performing routine maintenance around the ranch, with electric heat and plenty of cord wood for the fireplaces, he had little to do during the winter months except hunker down and wait for spring.
In his pocket might be a newspaper with a squib: Oak cord wood is bringing ten dollars a cord in Los Angeles.
Friends, lords, servants, strangers, thrown about like cord wood until he was ringed in with an ever heightening wall of bodies.
She was destined for Cairo, Illinois, with stops at any landing with a flag out, to load on cord wood more than passengers.
Louis, except for a second or two at large towns, or to hitch thirty-cord wood-boats alongside.
The dying were starting to pile uplike hideous cord wood in the cut forming a blood-soakedbarricade.
There was no square foot of the chamber that did not contain racks of scrolls, and others, hundreds perhaps, were piled like cord wood here and there.