MORTAR

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does mortar mean? 

• MORTAR (noun)
  The noun MORTAR has 3 senses:

1. a muzzle-loading high-angle gun with a short barrel that fires shells at high elevations for a short range

2. used as a bond in masonry or for covering a wall

3. a bowl-shaped vessel in which substances can be ground and mixed with a pestle

  Familiarity information: MORTAR used as a noun is uncommon.

• MORTAR (verb)
  The verb MORTAR has 1 sense:

1. plaster with mortar

  Familiarity information: MORTAR used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• MORTAR (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A muzzle-loading high-angle gun with a short barrel that fires shells at high elevations for a short range

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Synonyms:

howitzer; mortar; trench mortar

Hypernyms ("mortar" is a kind of...):

high-angle gun (a cannon that can be fired at a high elevation for relatively short ranges)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Used as a bond in masonry or for covering a wall

Classified under:

Nouns denoting substances

Hypernyms ("mortar" is a kind of...):

building material (material used for constructing buildings)

Meronyms (substance of "mortar"):

cement (a building material that is a powder made of a mixture of calcined limestone and clay; used with water and sand or gravel to make concrete and mortar)

Derivation:

mortar (plaster with mortar)

Sense 3

Meaning:

A bowl-shaped vessel in which substances can be ground and mixed with a pestle

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Hypernyms ("mortar" is a kind of...):

vessel (an object used as a container (especially for liquids))

• MORTAR (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they mortar    ... he / she / it mortars   
Past simple: mortared   
Past participle: mortared   
-ing form: mortaring   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Plaster with mortar

Classified under:

Verbs of touching, hitting, tying, digging

Context example:

mortar the wall

Hypernyms (to "mortar" is one way to...):

daub; plaster (coat with plaster)

Domain category:

masonry (the craft of a mason)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s something

Derivation:

mortar (used as a bond in masonry or for covering a wall)

 Context examples 

“Bricks and mortar are more like a lady's hand!”

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

The stones are big and roughly cut, and the mortar has by process of time been washed away between them.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Maróth pointed out it would have been much more costly and time-consuming to research mortar technology than to acquire it this way.

(Hungarian state-owned enterprise acquires Hirtenberger Defence Group, Wikinews)

What loss, besides mortar and marble and wood-work had followed upon it?

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Beyond lay another dull wilderness of bricks and mortar, its silence broken only by the heavy, regular footfall of the policeman, or the songs and shouts of some belated party of revellers.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

On November 4, Hungarian daily newspaper Magyar Nemzet revealed a deal whereby, on October 29, Hungarian state-owned enterprise HDT Védelmi Ipari Kft. (HDT Limited) acquired Austrian mortar and shell manufacturer Hirtenberger Defence Group.

(Hungarian state-owned enterprise acquires Hirtenberger Defence Group, Wikinews)

I saw the fingers and toes grasp the corners of the stones, worn clear of the mortar by the stress of years, and by thus using every projection and inequality move downwards with considerable speed, just as a lizard moves along a wall.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

For this reason, though Mr. Chillip often asked me to go and see him (he was a widower, having, some years before that, lost a little small light-haired wife, whom I can just remember connecting in my own thoughts with a pale tortoise-shell cat), it was but seldom that I enjoyed the happiness of passing an afternoon in his closet of a surgery; reading some book that was new to me, with the smell of the whole Pharmacopoeia coming up my nose, or pounding something in a mortar under his mild directions.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

The tomb in the day-time, and when wreathed with fresh flowers, had looked grim and gruesome enough; but now, some days afterwards, when the flowers hung lank and dead, their whites turning to rust and their greens to browns; when the spider and the beetle had resumed their accustomed dominance; when time-discoloured stone, and dust-encrusted mortar, and rusty, dank iron, and tarnished brass, and clouded silver-plating gave back the feeble glimmer of a candle, the effect was more miserable and sordid than could have been imagined.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

An indescribable character of faded gentility that attached to the house I sought, and made it unlike all the other houses in the street—though they were all built on one monotonous pattern, and looked like the early copies of a blundering boy who was learning to make houses, and had not yet got out of his cramped brick-and-mortar pothooks—reminded me still more of Mr. and Mrs. Micawber.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)