Nee·dle n.
 1. A small instrument of steel, sharply pointed at one end, with an eye to receive a thread, -- used in sewing.
 Note: ☞ In some needles (as for sewing machines) the eye is at the pointed end, but in ordinary needles it is at the blunt end.
 2. See Magnetic needle, under Magnetic.
 3. A slender rod or wire used in knitting; a knitting needle; also, a hooked instrument which carries the thread or twine, and by means of which knots or loops are formed in the process of netting, knitting, or crocheting.
 4. Bot. One of the needle-shaped secondary leaves of pine trees. See Pinus.
 5. Any slender, pointed object, like a needle, as a pointed crystal, a sharp pinnacle of rock, an obelisk, etc.
 Dipping needle. See under Dipping.
 Needle bar, the reciprocating bar to which the needle of a sewing machine is attached.
 Needle beam Arch., in shoring, the horizontal cross timber which goes through the wall or a pier, and upon which the weight of the wall rests, when a building is shored up to allow of alterations in the lower part.
 Needle furze Bot., a prickly leguminous plant of Western Europe; the petty whin (Genista Anglica).
 Needle gun, a firearm loaded at the breech with a cartridge carrying its own fulminate, which is exploded by driving a slender needle, or pin, into it. [archaic]
 Needle loom Weaving, a loom in which the weft thread is carried through the shed by a long eye-pointed needle instead of by a shuttle.
 Needle ore Min., acicular bismuth; a sulphide of bismuth, lead, and copper occuring in acicular crystals; -- called also aikinite.
 Needle shell Zool., a sea urchin.
 Needle spar Min., aragonite.
 Needle telegraph, a telegraph in which the signals are given by the deflections of a magnetic needle to the right or to the left of a certain position.
 Sea needle Zool., the garfish.


 needle furze
      n : prickly yellow-flowered shrub of the moors of New England
          and Europe [syn: broom tree, petty whin, {Genista
          anglica]