[met-l] 
noun, verb, -aled, -al⋅ing or (especially British
) -alled, -al⋅ling.| 1. | any of a class of elementary substances, as gold, silver, or copper, all of which are crystalline when solid and many of which are characterized by opacity, ductility, conductivity, and a unique luster when freshly fractured. |
| 2. | Chemistry.
|
| 3. | an alloy or mixture composed wholly or partly of such substances, as brass. |
| 4. | an object made of metal. |
| 5. | formative material; stuff. |
| 6. | mettle. |
| 7. | Printing.
|
| 8. | molten glass in the pot or melting tank. |
| 9. | British. road metal. |
| 10. | to furnish or cover with metal. |
| 11. | British. to pave or surface (a road) with broken stone. |
| 1. | metallurgical. |
| 2. | metallurgy. |
| broken stone, cinders, etc., used for making roads. |
| met·al (mět'l) n.
To cover or surface (a roadbed, for example) with broken stones. [Middle English, from Old French, from Latin metallum, from Greek metallon, mine, ore, metal.] Word History: In modern English, metal and mettle are pronounced the same, and they are in fact all related. Middle English borrowed metal from Old French in the 14th century; Old French metal, metail, came from Latin metallum, from Greek metallon, "mine, quarry, ore, metal." By the 16th century, metal had also come to mean "the stuff one is made of, one's character," but there was no difference in spelling between the literal and figurative senses until about 1700, when the spelling mettle, originally just a variant of metal, was fixed for the sense "fortitude." The history of English has numerous examples of pairs of words, like metal and mettle, that are (historically speaking) spelling variants of the same word; two other such pairs are trump/triumph and through/thorough. |
metal met·al (mět'l)
n.
Any of a category of electropositive elements that usually reflect light, are generally good conductors of heat and electricity, and can be melted or fused, hammered into thin sheets, or drawn into wires. Typical metals form salts with nonmetals, basic oxides with oxygen, and alloys with one another.
An alloy of two or more metallic elements.
An object made of metal.
METAL
1. Mega-Extensive Telecommunications Applications Language. BBS language for PRODOS 8 on Apple II.
2. The syntax-definition formalism of the Mentor system. Metal specifications are compiled to specifications for a scanner/parser generator such as Lex/Yacc. "Metal: A Formalism to Specify Formalisms", G. Kahn et al, Sci Comp Prog 3:151-188 (1983).