%tops%

{ } a. Pertaining to autopsy; autoptical. [ Obs. ] [ 1913 Webster ]

n. [ Auto- + Gr. &unr_; the itch. ] (Med.) That which is given under the doctrine of administering a patient's own virus. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. [ Gr. &unr_;, fr. &unr_; seen by one's self; &unr_; self + &unr_; seen: cf. F. autopsie. See Optic, a. ] 1. Personal observation or examination; seeing with one's own eyes; ocular view. [ 1913 Webster ]

By autopsy and experiment. Cudworth. [ 1913 Webster ]

2. (Med.) Dissection of a dead body, for the purpose of ascertaining the cause, seat, or nature of a disease; a post-mortem examination. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. a suborder of extinct animals including triceratops.
Syn. -- suborder Ceratopsia. [ WordNet 1.5 ]

n. any of several four-footed herbivorous horned dinosaurs with enormous beaked skulls, of the late Cretaceous in North America and Mongolia.
Syn. -- horned dinosaur. [ WordNet 1.5 ]

n. an extinct family of American ceratopsian dinosaurs.
Syn. -- family Ceratopsidae. [ WordNet 1.5 ]

n. (Naut.) the topsail on a foremast. See Sail. [ 1913 Webster + WordNet 1.5 ]

n. (Naut.) A small triangular sail having its foot extended upon the gaff and its luff upon the topmast. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. a topsail set on the mainmast. [ WordNet 1.5 ]

prop. n. [ NL., fr. Gr. peri`patos a walking about. ] (Zool.) The type genus of Peripatopsidae, consisting of onychophorans (lowly organized invertebrates related evolutionarily to the arthropods, also called “walking worms” AND “velvet worms”) found chiefly in Asiatic and African tropical regions, in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and tropical America.
Syn. -- genus Peripatopsis. [ 1913 Webster + WordNet 1.5 ]

The average resident of the Northern Hemisphere is probably not familiar with the Onychophora; they are restricted to forest regions of South America, Africa, the Caribbean, and Oceania. Shy creatures, able to hide in incredibly tight crevices, these “velvet worms” (about ninety living species known) are rarely seen even in their natural habitat. Yet onychophorans are of great interest to biologists, because they seem to be related to arthropods, and give us an idea of what the ancestors of the arthropods may have been like. Although they are rare as fossils, a number that have been found from the Cambrian period. These fossils show that abundant marine relatives of the Onychophora flourished in the seas 520 million years ago. From: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/onychoph/onychophora.html [ PJC ]

In the 1913 Webster Peripatus was identified with the now disused order Malacopoda (within the phylum arthropoda); however, Malacopoda is now assigned to a group contained within the phylum Onycophora. The name Peripatus has also been used (possibly erroneously) to designate a specific species, as indicated in the following quotation found on the internet. [ PJC ]

The onychophora, peripatus, is a unique creature, found in New Zealand. There is no other like peripatus. It is probably a creature from the dawn of time, as it seems to have a fossil representative of the most early invertebrates: Aysheaia, as may be found in some deposits of Burgess Shale.
Aside from a lovely name, Peripatus doesn't look much like an earth creature. It is also frequently colored blue. It has a mixture of attributes similar to both annelida and arthopoda. I have also found interesting the arguments taxonomists have had for years over the creature; it's taxonomy has been fussed and fought over, and changed several times. Mostly, there just isn't anything like it.
Its pre-historic relative (which looks just like it), lived at a time when mother nature was just begining to make complex, multi-cellular creatures, and most of them (with the exception of the jellyfish) looked like pure experiments in physical design. No decendants remain of them, except Peripatus. They were all bizzare in the extreme, like something from a sci-fi nightmare. And they are all gone.
Except Peripatus. Peripatus still remains. It is totally bizzare, and totally unique. Jonathon R. Oglesbee [ PJC ]

n. [ NL., fr. Gr. fw^s, fwto`s, light + 'o`psis sight. ] (Med.) An affection of the eye, in which the patient perceives luminous rays, flashes, coruscations, etc. See phosphene. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. Same as Photopsia. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. (Zool.) A remora. It was fabled to stop ships by attaching itself to them. Sylvester. [ 1913 Webster ]

prop. n. [ NL., fr. Gr. qa`natos death + 'o`psis view. ] The title of a poem by William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), meditating on the subject of death. One of Bryant's best-remembered poems, it was written in 1811 and was discovered and rushed to publication in 1817 (in the North American Review) by Bryant's father, originally without the poet's knowledge. A revised version was published in 1821. In this elegy Bryant reflects that death comes to all men, common and great, and that all eventually shall rest together in the "mighty sepulchre" of the earth. [ PJC ]

The text of the poem is as follows:

To him who in the love of nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty; and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy that steals away
Their sharpness ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart; --
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings, while from all around --
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air --
Comes a still voice. Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix forever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mold.
Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world -- with kings,
The powerful of the earth -- the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre. -- The hills
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun, -- the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods -- rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,
Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste, --
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom. -- Take the wings
Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound,
Save his own dashings -- yet the dead are there:
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep -- the dead reign there alone.
So shalt thou rest -- and what if thou withdraw
In silence from the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one as before will chase
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glides away, the sons of men--
The youth in life's fresh spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man--
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side,
By those, who in their turn, shall follow them.
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
[ PJC ]

n. [ NL., fr. Gr. qa`natos death + 'o`psis view. ] A view of death; a meditation on the subject of death. Bryant. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. (Naut.) In a square-rigged vessel, the sail next above the lowermost sail on a mast. This sail is the one most frequently reefed or furled in working the ship. In a fore-and-aft rigged vessel, the sail set upon and above the gaff. See Cutter, Schooner, Sail, and Ship. [ 1913 Webster ]

Topsail schooner. (Naut.) See Schooner, and Illustration in Appendix. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. pl. Small rolls of dough, baked, cut in halves, and then browned in an oven, -- used as food for infants. [ 1913 Webster ]

'T is said that her top-and-bottoms were gilt. Hood. [ 1913 Webster ]

n.; pl. Topsmen 1. The chief drover of those who drive a herd of cattle. P. Cyc. [ 1913 Webster ]

2. The uppermost sawyer in a saw pit; a topman. Simmonds. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. The upper layer of soil; surface soil. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. (Engin.) The act or art of taking off the top soil of land before an excavation or embankment is begun. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. A stone that is placed on the top, or which forms the top. [ 1913 Webster ]