pole

noun poles

1. Originally, a stick; now specifically, a long and slender piece of metal or (especially) wood, used for various construction or support purposes. For a spell we done pretty well. Then there came a reg'lar terror of a sou'wester same as you don't get one summer in a thousand, and blowed the shanty flat and ripped about half of the weir poles out of the sand.
2. A construction by which an animal is harnessed to a carriage.

   Similar: carriage pole, beam, shaft, drawbar

3. A type of basic fishing rod.
4. A long sports implement used for pole-vaulting; now made of glassfiber or carbon fiber, formerly also metal, bamboo and wood have been used.
5. slang A telescope used to identify birds, aeroplanes or wildlife.
6. historical A unit of length, equal to a rod (¹⁄₄ chain or 5+¹⁄₂ yards).

   Similar: rod

7. abbreviation, ellipsis Ellipsis of pole position
8. US, slang A rifle.
9. slang, vulgar A penis.
10. slang A wicket, especially in the context of the number of wickets taken by a particular bowler. Only three cricketers have taken all 10 poles in a Test innings.

verb poles · poling · poled

1. To propel by pushing with poles, to push with a pole. Huck Finn poled that raft southward down the Mississippi because going northward against the current was too much work.
2. To identify something quite precisely using a telescope. He poled off the serial of the Gulfstream to confirm its identity.
3. transitive To furnish with poles for support. to pole beans or hops
4. transitive To convey on poles. to pole hay into a barn
5. transitive To stir, as molten glass, with a pole.
6. transitive To strike (the ball) very hard. Long had poled the ball into the lower deck in right center.
7. transitive To treat (copper) by blowing natural gas or other reducing agent through the molten oxide, burning off the oxygen. to pole copper

noun poles

1. Either of the two points on the earth's surface around which it rotates; also, similar points on any other rotating object.
2. A point of magnetic focus, especially each of the two opposing such points of a magnet (designated north and south).
3. broadly, figuratively Any of a small set of extremes; especially, either of two extremes that are possible or available. In discussing alternatives to the polar extremes, Professor Nguyen mentioned two poles of a filthy floor versus a sterile surgical site.
4. A fixed point relative to other points or lines.
5. A contact on an electrical device (such as a battery) at which electric current enters or leaves.
6. For a meromorphic function f(z), any point a for which f(z)→∞ as z→a. The function f(z)#61;#92;frac#123;1#125;#123;z-3#125; has a single pole at z#61;3.
7. obsolete The firmament; the sky. And the slope sun his upward beam / Shoots against the dusky pole,
8. Either of the states that characterize a bipolar disorder.

Opposite: zero

verb poles · poling · poled

1. transitive To induce piezoelectricity in (a substance) by aligning the dipoles.

noun Poles

1. A person from Poland or of Polish descent. The Poles are well dressed, handsome, and somehow on a larger scale than their surroundings, as if they have grown since the war and Poland itself has not.

   Similar: Polander

proper noun de la Pole

1. A surname.