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Foul   /faʊl/   Listen
adjective
Foul  adj.  (compar. fouler; superl. foulest)  
1.
Covered with, or containing, extraneous matter which is injurious, noxious, offensive, or obstructive; filthy; dirty; not clean; polluted; nasty; defiled; as, a foul cloth; foul hands; a foul chimney; foul air; a ship's bottom is foul when overgrown with barnacles; a gun becomes foul from repeated firing; a well is foul with polluted water. "My face is foul with weeping."
2.
Scurrilous; obscene or profane; abusive; as, foul words; foul language.
3.
Hateful; detestable; shameful; odious; wretched. "The foul with Sycorax." "Who first seduced them to that foul revolt?"
4.
Loathsome; disgusting; as, a foul disease.
5.
Ugly; homely; poor. (Obs.) "Let us, like merchants, show our foulest wares."
6.
Not favorable; unpropitious; not fair or advantageous; as, a foul wind; a foul road; cloudy or rainy; stormy; not fair; said of the weather, sky, etc. "So foul a sky clears not without a storm."
7.
Not conformed to the established rules and customs of a game, conflict, test, etc.; unfair; dishonest; dishonorable; cheating; as, foul play.
8.
Having freedom of motion interfered with by collision or entanglement; entangled; opposed to clear; as, a rope or cable may get foul while paying it out.
Foul anchor. (Naut.) See under Anchor.
Foul ball (Baseball), a ball that first strikes the ground outside of the foul ball lines, or rolls outside of certain limits.
Foul ball lines (Baseball), lines from the home base, through the first and third bases, to the boundary of the field.
Foul berth (Naut.), a berth in which a ship is in danger of fouling another vesel.
Foul bill, or Foul bill of health, a certificate, duly authenticated, that a ship has come from a place where a contagious disorder prevails, or that some of the crew are infected.
Foul copy, a rough draught, with erasures and corrections; opposed to fair or clean copy. "Some writers boast of negligence, and others would be ashamed to show their foul copies."
Foul proof, an uncorrected proof; a proof containing an excessive quantity of errors.
Foul strike (Baseball), a strike by the batsman when any part of his person is outside of the lines of his position.
To fall foul, to fall out; to quarrel. (Obs.) "If they be any ways offended, they fall foul."
To fall foul of or To run foul of. See under Fall.
To make foul water, to sail in such shallow water that the ship's keel stirs the mud at the bottom.


noun
Foul  n.  A bird. (Obs.)


Foul  n.  
1.
An entanglement; a collision, as in a boat race.
2.
(Baseball) See Foul ball, under Foul, a.
3.
In various games or sports, an act done contrary to the rules; a foul stroke, hit, play, or the like.


verb
Foul  v. t.  (past & past part. fouled; pres. part. fouling)  
1.
To make filthy; to defile; to daub; to dirty; to soil; as, to foul the face or hands with mire.
2.
(Mil.) To incrust (the bore of a gun) with burnt powder in the process of firing.
3.
To cover (a ship's bottom) with anything that impered its sailing; as, a bottom fouled with barnacles.
4.
To entangle, so as to impede motion; as, to foul a rope or cable in paying it out; to come into collision with; as, one boat fouled the other in a race.


Foul  v. i.  
1.
To become clogged with burnt powder in the process of firing, as a gun.
2.
To become entagled, as ropes; to come into collision with something; as, the two boats fouled.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Foul" Quotes from Famous Books



... [of the body]. If poetry can terrify people by hideous fictions, painting can do as much by depicting the same things in action. Supposing that a poet applies himself to represent beauty, ferocity, or a base, a foul or a monstrous thing, as against a painter, he may in his ways bring forth a variety of forms; but will the painter not satisfy more? are there not pictures to be seen, so like the actual things, that they ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... hammer on a coffin falls A knock upon the door! The colours wane, The dreams vanish! And leave that foul white scar, Tattoo'd with dreadful marks, the old calendar Blotching the blistered walls! The winter whistles thro' a shivered pane, And scatters on the bare boards at my feet These poor soiled manuscripts, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... the scuttle closed, so that the forecastle was nearly air-tight. In this little wet leaky hole we were all quartered, in an atmosphere so bad that our lamp, which swung in the middle from the beams, sometimes actually burned blue, with a large circle of foul air about it. Still I was never in better health than after three weeks of this life. I gained a great deal of flesh, and we all ate like horses. At every watch when we came below, before turning in, the bread barge and beef kid were overhauled. Each man ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern -- Volume 11 • Various
... with the Indians and tender regard for Indian rights, of religious liberty and interconfessional amity, and of a permanent peace policy. Its history has been characterized, beyond that of other States, by foul play toward the Indians and protracted Indian wars, by acrimonious and sometimes bloody sectarian conflicts, by obstinate insurrections against public order,[144:1] and by cruel and exterminating war upon honest settlers, ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... observed. "Wine is a fine thing to raise the spirits, though to my mind last night they took enough to raise more than they expected—ha, ha, ha! They thought they were attacked by ghosts and goblins, when in reality only a number of bats flew out against them after the foul air had already damped their ardour. The place swarms with the vermin. By the by, if the Senor, my master, will give me the key of the vault, I will get up that beast of a dog, and bury him or hang him up ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston


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