n. A proposition so framed as to exercise one's ingenuity in discovering its meaning; an ambiguous, complex, or puzzling question offered for solution; an enigma; a dark saying.n. Anything abstruse, intricate, paradoxical, or puzzling; a puzzle.n. A person who manifests ambiguities or contradictions of character or conduct.To explain; interpret; solve; unriddle.To understand; make out.To puzzle; perplex.To speak in riddles, ambiguously, or enigmatically.n. A sieve, especially a coarse one for sand, grain, and the like.n. In founding, a sieve with half-inch mesh, used in the molding-shop for cleaning and mixing old floor-sand.n. In hydraulic engineering, a form of river-weir.n. In wire-working, a flat board set with iron pins sloped in opposite directions. It is used to straighten wire, which is drawn in a zigzag course between the pins.To sift through a riddle or sieve: as, to riddle sand.To sift by means of a coarse-netted dredge, as young oysters on a bed.To reduce in quantity as if by sifting; condense.To fill with holes; especially, to perforate with shot so as to make like a riddle; hence, to puncture or pierce all over as if with shot; penetrate.To use a riddle or sieve; pass anything through a riddle.To fall in drops or fine streams, as through a riddle or sieve.n. A curtain; a bed-curtain; in a church, one of the pair of curtains inclosing an altar on the north and south, often hung from rods driven into the wall.To plait.n. In minting. See the extract.