pole

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

• noun Either extremity of an axis through a sphere.
• noun Either of the regions contiguous to the extremities of the earth's rotational axis, the North Pole or the South Pole.
• noun Electricity Either of two oppositely charged terminals, as in an electric cell or battery.
• noun Either extremity of the main axis of a nucleus, cell, or organism.
• noun Either end of the spindle formed in a cell during mitosis.
• noun The point on a nerve cell where a process originates.
• noun Either of two antithetical ideas, propensities, forces, or positions.
• noun A fixed point of reference.
• noun The origin in a polar coordinate system; the vertex of a polar angle.
• noun A point in the complex plane at which a given function is not defined.
• noun A long, relatively slender, generally rounded piece of wood or other material.
• noun The long tapering wooden shaft extending up from the front axle of a vehicle to the collars of the animals drawing it; a tongue.
• noun A unit of area equal to a square rod.
• noun Sports The inside position on the starting line of a racetrack.
• intransitive verb To propel with a pole.
• intransitive verb To propel (oneself) or make (one's way) by the use of ski poles.
• intransitive verb To support (plants) with a pole.
• intransitive verb To strike, poke, or stir with a pole.
• intransitive verb To propel a boat or raft with a pole.
• intransitive verb To use ski poles to maintain or gain speed.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun In mathematics: The cointersection point of the joins when two correlated polystigms have the joins of their paired dots and codots copunctal.
• noun In function-theory, a non-essential singular point.
• noun In cytology, one of the ends of the achromatic spindle in mitosis, or indirect cell-division. The opposite end is sometimes called the antipole.
• To furnish with poles for support: as, to pole beans.
• To bear or convey on poles.
• To impel by means of a pole, as a boat; push forward by the use of poles.
• In copper-refining, to stir with a pole.
• To use a pole; push or impel a boat with a pole.
• An obsolete spelling of poll.
• noun A long, slender, tapering piece of wood, such as the trunk of a tree of any size, from which the branches have been cut; a piece of wood (or metal) of much greater length than thickness, especially when more or less rounded and tapering.
• noun Specifically— A rod used in measuring.
• noun In a two-horse vehicle, a long tapering piece of wood, forming the shaft or tongue, carrying the neck-yoke or the pole-straps, and sometimes the whiffletrees, by means of which the carriage is drawn.
• noun A fishing-rod.
• noun A bean-pole or hop-pole.
• noun A ship's mast.
• noun A perch or rod, a measure of length containing 16½ feet or 5½ yards; also, a measure of surface, a square pole denoting 5½ × 5½ yards, or 30¼ square yards.
• noun A flatfish, Pleuronectes or Glyptocephalus cynoglossus, also called pole-dab.
• noun That part of the sperm-whale's lower jaw which holds the teeth. See pan, 12.
• noun One of the two points in which the axis of the earth produced cuts the celestial sphere; the fixed point about which (on account of the revolution of the earth) the stars appear to revolve. These points are called the poles of the world, or the celestial poles.
• noun Either of the two points on the earth's surface in which it is cut by the axis of rotation.
• noun In general, a point on a sphere equally distant from every part of the circumference of a great circle of the sphere.
• noun Hence In any more or less spherical body, one of two opposite points of the surface in any way distinguished; or, when there is a marked equator, one of the two points most remote from it: as, in botany, the poles of certain spores or sporidia.
• noun The star which is nearest the pole of the earth; the pole-star.