knot
noun
1. a tight cluster of people or things
- a small knot of women listened to his sermon
- the bird had a knot of feathers forming a crest
Definition categories: group, bunch, clump, cluster, clustering
2. any of various fastenings formed by looping and tying a rope (or cord) upon itself or to another rope or to another object
Definition categories: man–made, fastener, fastening, fixing, holdfast
3. a hard cross-grained round piece of wood in a board where a branch emerged
- the saw buckled when it hit a knot
Definition categories: substance, wood
4. (of ships and wind) a unit of speed equal to one nautical mile per hour or about 1.15 statute miles per hour
Definition categories: time, rate
5. something twisted and tight and swollen
- their muscles stood out in knots
- his stomach was in knots
Similar word(s): gnarl
Definition categories: shape, distortion
6. soft lump or unevenness in a yarn; either an imperfection or created by design
Definition categories: attribute, raggedness, roughness
7. a sandpiper that breeds in the Arctic and winters in the southern hemisphere
Similar word(s): grayback, greyback
Definition categories: animal, sandpiper
Sentences with knot as a noun:
- Climbers must make sure that all knots are both secure and of types that will not weaken the rope.
- The nurse was brushing knots from the protesting child's hair.
- A knot can be defined as a non-self-intersecting broken line whose endpoints coincide: when such a knot is constrained to lie in a plane, then it is simply a polygon.
- I got into a knot when I inadvertently insulted a policeman.
- When preparing to tell stories at a campfire, I like to set aside a pile of pine logs with lots of knots, since they burn brighter and make dramatic pops and cracks.
- Jeremy had a knot on his head where he had bumped it on the bedframe.
- the knot of the tale
- Cedric claimed his old yacht could make 12 knots.
verb
1. make into knots; make knots out of
- She knotted her fingers
Definition categories: creation
2. tie or fasten into a knot
- knot the shoelaces
Definition categories: contact, bind, tie
3. tangle or complicate
Similar word(s): ravel, tangle
Definition categories: contact, enlace, entwine, interlace, intertwine, lace, twine
Sentences with knot as a verb:
- We knotted the ends of the rope to keep it from unravelling.
- She knotted her brow in concentration while attempting to unravel the tangled strands.