Definitions

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

  • adjective Having a hole or holes, especially a row of small holes.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Same as perforate.
  • By extension, cut through in many places and with irregular and somewhat large openings. Compare à jour.
  • In heraldry, same as cleché.
  • Posterior, a deep fossa situated track of the corpora albicantia, and between the crura cerebri, perforated by numerous holes for the passage of blood-vessels.

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

  • adjective Pierced with holes.
  • adjective Specifically, having a series of holes enabling easy tearing along a straight line.
  • verb Simple past tense and past participle of perforate.

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

  • adjective having a hole cut through
  • adjective having a number or series of holes

Etymologies

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Examples

  • There is a legend that, of old, men hung up the perforated churinga on the sacred _Nurtunja_ pole: and so they still have _perforated_ stone churinga, not usually more than a foot in length.

    The Clyde Mystery a Study in Forgeries and Folklore Andrew Lang 1878

  • Churinga, over a foot in length, they tell us, are not usually perforated; many churinga are not perforated, many are: _but the Arunta do not know why some are perforated_.

    The Clyde Mystery a Study in Forgeries and Folklore Andrew Lang 1878

  • a _Cobweb_, which yet, with the _Microscope_, I could plainly perceive [7] to be _perforated_, both by looking on the _ends_ of it, and by looking on it _against the light_ which was much the _easier way_ to determine whether it were solid or perforated; for, taking a small pipe of glass, and closing one end of it, then filling it _half full_ of water, and holding it

    Micrographia Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses with Observations and Inquiries Thereupon Robert Hooke 1669

  • The 77-year-old leader had been in hospital since November 1 when he underwent an operation for what was officially described as a perforated intestine, but which independent newspapers have said was cancer of the digestive system.

    ANC Daily News Briefing 1999

  • Several looks were "perforated" with big hollowed-out circles as well as sweaters with (transparent) stripes and slits.

    Cynthia Rowley: Predictably Unpredictable 2010

  • The diagnosis of acute abdominal inflammation is non specific, but most likely describes a catastrophic event such as perforated or clotted off bowel, or pancreatitis.

    Euthanasia in Britain today 2009

  • Drainage facilities, such as perforated pipes, troughs or culverts, allow hydraulic filter bed cleaning.

    8. Classification of roughing filters 1996

  • These "perforated" rings will be introduced by the same method into the saturated rock under the water table (See 6.28).

    6. Water sources, their protection and development 1992

  • "Ruota," behind which a voice spoke mysteriously as through a telephone, the wooden shelf turning on itself and offering us a key -- key opening (by instructions of mysterious voice) an adjacent small room: two straw chairs on either side of small table before a thick black grating; another grating behind that, and a kind of perforated shutter between.

    The Spirit of Rome Vernon Lee 1895

  • Ornaments of silver, such as perforated coins, are much used in adorning the men's pigtails, and coral and malachite ornaments are also common in Tibet for the same purpose, and are much valued by the natives.

    In the Forbidden Land Arnold Henry Savage Landor 1894

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