Definitions

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

  • noun A small, solid or densely packed ball or mass, as of food, wax, or medicine.
  • noun A bullet or piece of small shot.
  • noun A stone ball, used as a catapult missile or a primitive cannonball.
  • transitive verb To make or form into pellets.
  • transitive verb To strike with pellets.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A little ball, as of wax, dough, paper, lead (a shot), etc.: as, homeopathic pellets.
  • noun A stone ball formerly used as a missile, particularly from a sling; also, a cannon-ball; a bullet.
  • noun In heraldry, a roundel sable: same as ogress.
  • noun In numismatics, a small pellet-shaped boss. T. Erans.
  • noun In decorative art, a small rounded projection, usually one of many. Compare purl.
  • noun The indigestible part of the food of hawks and owls, consisting of bones, hair, feathers, etc., which is cast up or regurgitated in the shape of elongated balls.
  • To form into pellets or little balls.

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

  • transitive verb obsolete To form into small balls; to pelletize.
  • noun A little ball.
  • noun obsolete A bullet; a ball for firearms.
  • noun a gun that fires small pellets, less than 3 mm diameter, usually made of metal.
  • noun (Arch.) a narrow band ornamented with smalt, flat disks.

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

  • noun Usually a small, compressed, symmetrical and hard chunk of matter. Ex: Wood pellet, ore pellet, etc.
  • noun A lead projectile used as ammunition in rifled air guns.
  • noun Compressed byproduct of digestion regurgitated by owls. Serves as a waste disposal mechanism for indigestible parts of food, such as fur and bones.
  • verb To form into pellets
  • verb To strike with pellets

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a solid missile discharged from a firearm
  • noun a small sphere

Etymologies

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

[Middle English pelet, from Old French pelote, from Vulgar Latin *pilotta, diminutive of Latin pila, ball.]

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