seal

RC Church the obligation never to reveal anything said by a penitent in confession

seal

1. any pinniped mammal of the families Otariidae (see eared seal) and Phocidae (see earless seal) that are aquatic but come on shore to breed

2. any earless seal (family Phocidae), esp the common or harbour seal or the grey seal (Halichoerus grypus)

3. sealskin

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

seal

[sēl]

(engineering)

Any device or system that creates a nonleaking union between two mechanical or process-system elements; for example, gaskets for pipe connection seals, mechanical seals for rotating members such as pump shafts, and liquid seals to prevent gas entry to or loss from a gas-liquid processing sequence.

A tight, perfect closure or joint.

(vertebrate zoology)

Any of various carnivorous mammals of the suborder Pinnipedia, especially the families Phoridae, containing true seals, and Otariidae, containing the eared and fur seals.

seal

seal, 4

1. A device usually consisting of an impression upon wax or paper, or a wafer, or the inscription of the letters L.S. (locus sigilli), sometimes used in the execution of a formal legal document such as a deed or contract. In some states, the statute of limitations applicable to a contract under seal is longer than that for a contract not under seal; in most states, the seal has been deprived by statute of some or all of its legal effect.

2. An embossing device or stamp used by a design professional on his drawings and specifications as evidence of his registration in the state where the work, 1 is to be performed.

SEAL

Semantics-directed Environment Adaptation Language.

ftp://ftp.cwi.nl/pub/gipe/0092b.ps.Z.

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The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Seal

(also gland), a device to provide hermetic sealing in machine connections between rotating and stationary parts. This is accomplished using sealing rings, flanges, or other parts placed on the shaft or by means of various packings, such as asbestos, asbestos-wire, or fabric-reinforced rubber, embedded in the recesses or cavities of covers, housings, and similar parts.

Seal

any one mammal of the order Pinnipedia, which comprises the families Phocidae (true seals) and Otariidae (eared seals). The true seals probably descended from primitive Mustelidae, whereas the eared seals apparently are descendants of primitive bearlike creatures. True seals lack external ears, and both pairs of limbs are modified into clawed flippers. The hind limbs of seals are directed backward and serve for locomotion in water; they do not bend forward on dry land and cannot support the heavy body. There are about 20 species, belonging to 12 genera. Seals are widely distributed but are particularly numerous in polar latitudes. Most species form rookeries on the ice during the mating and molting period. The waters of the USSR are inhabited by nine species (in six genera), of which the harp seal, Caspian seal, ringed seal, Pacific harbor seal, and bearded seal are of commercial significance.

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

Kotick, Matkah's baby, was born in the middle of that confusion, and he was all head and shoulders, with pale, watery blue eyes, as tiny seals must be, but there was something about his coat that made his mother look at him very closely.

You mustn't swim till you're six weeks old, Or your head will be sunk by your heels; And summer gales and Killer Whales Are bad for baby seals.

Are bad for baby seals, dear rat, As bad as bad can be; But splash and grow strong, And you can't be wrong.

Little seals can no more swim than little children, but they are unhappy till they learn.

Now and then he would see a thin fin, like a big shark's fin, drifting along close to shore, and he knew that that was the Killer Whale, the Grampus, who eats young seals when he can get them; and Kotick would head for the beach like an arrow, and the fin would jig off slowly, as if it were looking for nothing at all.

My bones are aching for the land." And so they all came to the beaches where they had been born, and heard the old seals, their fathers, fighting in the rolling mist.

They came from the little village not half a mile from the sea nurseries, and they were deciding what seals they would drive up to the killing pens--for the seals were driven just like sheep--to be turned into seal-skin jackets later on.

The distance to the killing-grounds was only half a mile, but it took an hour to cover, because if the seals went too fast Kerick knew that they would get heated and then their fur would come off in patches when they were skinned.

"I suppose it is rather awful from your way of looking at it, but if you seals will come here year after year, of course the men get to know of it, and unless you can find an island where no men ever come you will always be driven."

Kotick thought that that was good advice, so he swam round to his own beach, hauled out, and slept for half an hour, twitching all over, as seals will.

So he called out: "Isn't there any place for seals to go where men don't ever come?"

There he found that no one sympathized with him in his little attempt to discover a quiet place for the seals. They told him that men had always driven the holluschickie--it was part of the day's work--and that if he did not like to see ugly things he should not have gone to the killing grounds.

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