Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A slender grooved lead bar used to hold together the panes in stained glass or latticework windows.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The batch or amount of lead necessary to make sash-bars for 100 square feet of glazing; also, this amount cast into small rods or bars 12 or 14 inches long, and ready for drawing.
  • noun Hence The prepared sash-bar itself, having a section like an I, more or less rounded at each end, and called in technical language glaziers' turned lead or window-lead.
  • noun A comb.
  • noun A ridge.
  • noun Preterit of come.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • imp. of come.
  • noun A slender rod of cast lead, with or without grooves, used, in casements and stained-glass windows, to hold together the panes or pieces of glass.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb Simple past of come.
  • verb Simple past of cum.
  • noun A grooved strip of lead used to hold panes of glass together.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Possibly dialectal kame, ridge; see kame.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Compare Scots came ("comb"), caim ("comb"), and Middle English camet ("silver").

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Examples

  • During the months in camp he had been wholly absorbed in new work and new friendships, and now his own neighbourhood came to him with the freshness of things that have been forgotten for a long while, —came together before his eyes as a harmonious whole.

    XI. Book Three: Sunrise on the Prairie 1922

  • When Theodore Roosevelt first came into my life, he “came to help.

    XVI. A Young Men’s Hero 1904

  • "And ascended into heaven" -- this passage shows the belief that He returned to the place from which He came, for the Nicene Creed has stated that he "_came down from heaven_ and was incarnate ... and was made man."

    Mystic Christianity William Walker Atkinson 1897

  • Wych Hazel turned for one more look at the road, drew a deep sigh that was half patient and half impatient; and then slowly pulling off cap and gloves came forward to the corner room, chanting softly to herself as she came—

    The Gold of Chickaree Susan Warner 1852

  • But when the new Logician, who was the new Magician, came, with 'the part operative' of his speculation; with his 'New Machine,' with the rod of his new definition, with the staff of _his_ genera and species, -- when the right name was found for it, it heard, it heard afar, it heard in its heaven and _came_.

    The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded Delia Bacon 1835

  • Hitherto the ship had been kept in her first position by backing and filling the mizen-topsail, but now she came to, and eventually _came round_: but

    Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I John Ross 1816

  • Maclachlan, who was much the fharper man of the two, no fooner heard that this lady came from Chef - ter, with the other circumftances which he learned from the hosier, than it came* into his head that fhe might poffibly be his friend's wife; and prefently ac - quainted him with this fufpicion, which had never once occurred to Fitzpatrick himfelf.

    The Works of Henry Fielding, Esq: With the Life of the Author. In Twelve Volumes. A New Edition ... 1783

  • Poet to whose _human_ sense those hard hostile walls dissolved and cleared away, till he could see the Volscian wives clasping _their_ loves, as they 'came coffined home'; it was the Poet who dared to stain the joy and triumph of that fond meeting, the glory and pride of that triumphal entry, with those _human_ thoughts; it was he who heard above the roll of the drum, and the swell of the clarions and trumpets, and the shout of the rejoicing multitude above the herald's voice -- the groans of mortal anguish in the field, the cries of human sorrow in the city, the shrieks of mothers that lacked sons, the greetings of wives whose loves '_came coffined home_.'

    The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded Delia Bacon 1835

  • Some people say the term came from Adbusters, the non-profit "culture-jamming" magazine that initiates activist campaigns.

    Turnstyle: Who's Behind It? Tracing The Origins Of The 99 Percent Movement Turnstyle 2011

  • Some people say the term came from Adbusters, the non-profit "culture-jamming" magazine that initiates activist campaigns.

    Turnstyle: Who's Behind It? Tracing The Origins Of The 99 Percent Movement Turnstyle 2011

Comments

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  • A grooved strip of lead or (rarely) another metal, generally with an H-shaped cross section, used to join separate parts of glass windows.

    November 8, 2007