At the time the Eighth Amendment was adopted, the Court noted, ``the word `fine' was understood to mean a payment to a sovereign as punishment for some offense.''\33\ The Eighth Amendment itself, as were antecedents of the Clause in the Virginia Declaration of Rights and in the English Bill of Rights of 1689, ``clearly was adopted with the particular intent of placing limits on the powers of the new government.''\34\ Therefore, while leaving open the issues of whether the Clause ...
A reserve of money set aside, especially for a specific purpose. Generally speaking, a nest egg refers to savings for a major expense, such as retirement. However, it may also refer to smaller expenses that nonetheless require savings. Examples of the latter include nest eggs for vacations or down payments for a house.
The term ovum is usually restricted to the single female sex cell, but the term egg, in its common use to indicate a bird's egg, refers to a more complex structure, only part of which is produced in the ovary of the bird. The ovum of such an egg is a cell swollen with yolk material. The rest of the eggâe.g., the jelly mass surrounding amphibian eggs, and the shell, membranes, and egg white, or albumen, of bird eggsâis not cellular and is secreted around the ovum as it passes down the oviduct.