LEFT • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Left

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/lɛft/ Listen

verb

Left past, past part. Of Leave.

adjective

Left adj.

1.

Of or pertaining to that side of the body in man on which the muscular action of the limbs is usually weaker than on the other side; opposed to right, when used in reference to a part of the body; as, the left hand, or arm; the left ear. Also said of the corresponding side of the lower animals.

2.

Situated so that the left side of the body is toward it; as, the left side of a deliberative meeting is that to the left of the presiding officer; the left wing of an army is that to the left of the center to one facing an enemy.

Left bank of a river, that which is on the left hand of a person whose face is turned downstream.

Left bower. See under 2d Bower.

Left center, the members whose sympathies are, in the main, with the members of the Left, but who do not favor extreme courses, and on occasions vote with the government. They sit between the Center and the extreme Left.

Over the left shoulder, or Over the left, an old but still current colloquialism, or slang expression, used as an aside to indicate insincerity, negation, or disbelief; as, he said it, and it is true, over the left.

noun

Left n.

1.

That part of surrounding space toward which the left side of one's body is turned; as, the house is on the left when you face North. "Put that rose a little more to the left."

2.

Those members of a legislative assembly (as in France) who are in the opposition; the advanced republicans and extreme radicals. They have their seats at the left-hand side of the presiding officer. See Center, and Right.

See images of 'Left'

Etymology of 'Left'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Left" Quotes from Famous Books

... him with the command, and on the 29th of March, only twelve days after the British had left, gave him his orders, which concluded with this expression of confidence: "Your long service and experience will, better than my particular directions at this distance, point out to you the works most proper to be raised; and your ...

— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober

... to me that the castle had never been a properly fortified place, being intended only as a summer residence for the barons of Bussoleno, who used to resort hither during the extreme heat, if times were tolerably quiet. After this he left me. Taking him at his word, I walked all round, but there was only a shell remaining; the rest of the building had evidently been burnt, even the wing in which the present proprietor resides being, if I remember rightly, modernised. The site, however, and ...

— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler

... expression almost of terror,—"Good Heavens, if there isn't a chrysanthemum bed too, exactly like ours! what does this mean?" Hetty had little thought when she was laying out her garden, as nearly as possible like the garden she had left behind her, that she was writing a record which any eye but her own ...

— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson

... Once we start work on the reactors, you and Ned Puryear and Joe Ricci and Steve Chalmers can't be everywhere at once. A cybernetic system will only do what it's been assembled to do, and if some quarter-wit assembles one of these things wrong—" He left the sentence dangling; both men knew what ...

— Day of the Moron • Henry Beam Piper

... we had homespun cotton all the year round, but in winter we had a sheep skin jacket with the wool left on the inside. Sometimes sheep skin shoes with the wool on the inside and sometimes real cow leather shoes with wood peggings for winter, but always barefooted in summer, all the men ...

— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various

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