CAST, v.t. pret. And pp. cast.

1. To throw, fling or send; that is, to drive from, by force, as from the hand, or from an engine.

Hagar cast the child under a shrub. Gen 21.

Uzziah prepared slings to cast stones. 2 Chr 26.

2. To sow; to scatter See d.

If a man should cast See one cast of the eye.

5. A throw of dice; hence, a state of chance or hazard.

It is an even cast, whether the army should march this way or that way.

Hence the phrase, the last cast, is used to denote that all is ventured on one throw, or one effort.

6. Form; shape.

A heroic poem in another cast.

7. A tinge; a slight coloring, or slight degree of a color; as a cast of green. Hence, a slight alteration in external appearance.

The native hue of resolution is sicklied oer with the pale cast of thought. Shak.

8. Manner; air; mien; as, a peculiar cast of countenance. This sense implies, the turn or manner of throwing; as, the neat cast f verse.

9. A flight; a number of hawks let go at once.

10. A small statue of bronze.

11. Among founders, a tube of wax, fitted into a mold, to give shape to metal.

12. A cylindrical piece of brass or copper, slit in two lengthwise, to form a canal or conduit, in a mold, for conveying metal.

13. Among plumbers, a little brazen funnel, at one end of a mold, for casting pipes without sodering, by means of which the melted metal is poured into the mold.

14. A breed, race, lineage, kind, sort.

15. In Hindoostan, a tribe or class of the same rank or profession; as the cast of Bramins, or priests; of rajahs, or princes; of choutres, or artificers; and of parias, or poor people. Or according to some writers, of Bramins; of cuttery, or soldiers; of shuddery, or merchants; and of wyse, or mechanics.

The four casts of the Hindoos are the Brahmins or sacred order; the Chechteres or soldiers and rulers; the Bice, Vaissya, or husbandmen and merchants; and the Sooders, Sudras, or laborers and mechanics.

16. A trick.