SG Heritage Dictionary

Alligator [Noun] Webster's Dictionary 1828

The American crocodile. This animal is of the lizard genus, having a long naked body, four feet, with five toes on the fore feet, and four on the hind, armed with claws, a serrated tail. The mouth is very large, and furnished with sharp teeth; the skin is brown, tough, and, on the sides, covered with tubercles. The largest of these animals grow to the length of seventeen or eighteen feet. They live in and about the rivers in warm climates, eat fish, and sometimes catch hogs, on the shore, or dogs which are swimming. In winter, they burrow in the earth, which they enter under water and work upwards, lying torpid till spring. The female lays a great number of eggs, which are deposited in the sand, and left to be hatched by the heat of the sun.

Alligator [Noun] Webster's Dictionary 1913

1. A large carnivorous reptile of the Crocodile family, peculiar to America. It has a shorter and broader snout than the crocodile, and the large teeth of the lower jaw shut into pits in the upper jaw, which has no marginal notches. Besides the common species of the southern United States, there are allied species in South America.

2. Any machine with strong jaws, one of which opens like the movable jaw of an alligator

3. a form of squeezer for the puddle ball

4. a rock breaker

5. a kind of job press, called also alligator press.

Alligator Encyclopedia Britannica

ALLIGATOR, (probably derived from the Spanish el lagarto, the lizard), an animal so closely allied to the crocodile that some naturalists have classed them together as forming one genus. It differs from the true crocodile principally in having the head broader and shorter, and the snout more obtuse; in having a large canine tooth of the under jaw received, not into an external furrow, but into a pit formed for it within the upper one; in wanting a jagged fringe which appears on the hind legs and feet of the crocodile; and in having the toes of the hind feet webbed not more than half-way to the tips. The principal species, all found in America only, are the common alligator (Alligator Mississippiensis or Crocodilus Lucius), occurring in the southern United States; the caiman or cayman (A. palpebrosus), in Surinam and Guiana; and the spectacled alligator or jacaré (A. scler ops), principally in Brazil. The names alligator and crocodile are often confounded in popular speech; and the structure and habits of the two animals are so similar that both may be conveniently considered under the heading Crocodile.

9th ed. Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 1, p. 585
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Alligator-pear [Noun] Webster's Dictionary 1828

A west India fruit, resembling a pear in shape, from one to two pounds in weight. It contains within its rind a yellow butyraceous substance, which, when the fruit is perfectly ripe, constitutes an agreeable food.