SG Heritage Dictionary

Loach [\N] Webster's Dictionary 1828

1. LOACH ,

2. LOAD, noun [ See lade .]

3. A burden; that which is laid on or put in any thing for conveyance. Thus we lay a load on a beat or on a man's shoulders, or on a cart or wagon; and we say, a light load, heavy load. A load then is indefinite in quantity or weight. But by usage, in some cases, the word has a more definite signification, and expresses a certain quantity or weight, or as much as is usually carried, or as can be well sustained. Load is never used for the cargo of a ship; this is called loading, lading, freight, or cargo.

4. Any heavy burden; a large quantity borne or sustained. a tree may be said to have a load of fruit upon it.

5. That which is borne with pain or difficulty; a grievous weight; encumbrance; in a literal sense.

6. Jove lightened of its load th' enormous mass -

7. In a figurative sense, we say, a load of care or grief; a load of guilt or crimes.

8. Weight or violence of blows.

9. A quantity of food or drink that oppresses, or as much as can be borne.

10. Among miners, the quantity of nine dishes of ore, each dish being about half a hundred weight.

Loach [Verb transitive] Webster's Dictionary 1828

1. preterit tense and participle passive loaded. [loaden, formerly used, is obsolete and laden belongs to lade. Load, from the noun, is a regular verb.]

2. To lay on a burden; to put on or in something to be carried, or as much as can be carried; as, to load a camel or a horse; to load a cart or wagon. To load a gun, is to charge, or to put in a sufficient quantity of powder, or powder and ball or shot.

3. To encumber; to lay on or put in that which is borne with pain or difficulty; in a literal sense, as to load the stomach with meat; or in a figurative sense, as to load the mind or memory.

4. To make heavy by something added or appended.

5. Thy dreadful vow, loaden with death -

6. So in a literal sense, to load a whip.

7. To bestow or confer on in great abundance; as, to load one with honors; to load with reproaches.

Loach [Noun] Webster's Dictionary 1913

Any one of several small, fresh-water, cyprinoid fishes of the genera Cobitis, Nemachilus, and allied genera, having six or more barbules around the mouth. They are found in Europe and Asia. The common European species (N. barbatulus) is used as a food fish.

Loach Encyclopedia Britannica

LOACH. The loaches lCobitidina} are small fishes of the Carp family (Cyprinidse), with a generally cylindrical body, with very small or without any scales, with six or more barbels round the mouth, with a short dorsal and anal fin, and with the pharyngeal teeth in a single series. The air-bladder is double, as in other carps, the two divisions lying side by side, or one behind the other; but it is always entirely or partially enclosed in a bony capsule formed by the anterior vertebrae. The largest of the ninety species known grow to a length of 10 or 12 inches, but the majority are of much smaller dimensions. They are found in Europe and Asia only. The typical species are partial to fast-running streams with stony bottoms; they abound in the waters draining the central Alps of Asia, and extend far towards the north of the Europo-Asiatic region. The tropical forms from south of the Himalayas are not less common, and some of them have assumed a more compressed form of the body with a bright coloration. In Great Britain two species occur, viz., the common loach (Nemachilus barbatulus'), and the more local C obitis taenia, which is distinguished by a small spine below the eye. The former is esteemed as food in parts of the Continent where it occurs in sufficient abundance. See Ichthyology.

9th ed. Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 14, p. 741
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