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doning a person or cause to which one is bound by allegiance or duty, or to which one has attached himself; desertion; failure in duty; a falling away; apostasy; backsliding. "Defection and falling away from God." Sir W. Raleigh. The general defection of the whole realm. Sir J. Davies.

A gaping or bursting open along a definite line of attachment or suture, without tearing, as in the opening of pods, or the bursting of capsules at maturity so as to emit seeds, etc.; also, the bursting open of follicles, as in the ovaries of animals, for the expulsion of their contents.

To hang down; to be sustained by being fastened or attached to something above. And ever-living lamps depend in rows. Pope.

That which depends; anything dependent or suspended; anything attached a subordinate to, or contingent on, something else. Like a large cluster of black grapes they show And make a large dependence from the bough. Dryden.

That which is attached to something else as its consequence, subordinate, satellite, and the like. This earth and its dependencies. T. Burnet. Modes I call such complex ideas which . . . are considered as dependencies on or affections of substances. Locke.

To part; to separate or disunite; to disengage; -- the opposite of attach; as, to detach the coats of a bulbous root from each other; to detach a man from a leader or from a party.

A mark or attribute, attached to the subject or predicate, narrowing the extent of both, but rendering them more definite and precise. Abp. Thomson.

To give up wholly; to addict; to direct the attention of wholly or compound; to attach; -- often with a reflexive pronoun; as, to devote one's self to science, to one's friends, to piety, etc.

Consecrated to a purpose; strongly attached; zealous; devout; as, a devoted admirer. -- De*vot"ed*ly, adv. -- De*vot"ed*ness, n.

The state of being devoted; addiction; eager inclination; strong attachment love or affection; zeal; especially, feelings toward God appropriately expressed by acts of worship; devoutness. Genius animated by a fervent spirit of devotion. Macaulay.

in consequence of the different expansions of the air in the bulbs. A graduated scale is attached to one leg of the tube. -- Differential windlass, or Chinese windlass, a windlass whose barrel has two parts of different diameters. The hoisting rope winds upon one part as it unwinds from the other, and a pulley sustai…

An attachment to a clock by which the quarter hours are struck upon bells of different tones.

A sinker attached to a fishing line; also, a line having several branches, each with such a sinker, used in deep-sea fishing. [Local, U. S.]

A genus of Branchiopoda, having a disklike shell, attached by one valve, which is perforated by the peduncle.

Remote from the point of attachment or origin; as, the distal end of a bone or muscle; -- opposed to proximal.

A genus of parasitic, trematode worms, having two suckers for attaching themselves to the part they infest. See 1st Fluke,

A syllable attached to the first tone of the major diatonic scale for the purpose of solmization, or solfeggio. It is the first of the seven syllables used by the Italians as manes of musical tones, and replaced, for the sake of euphony, the syllable Ut, applied to the note C. In England and America the same syllables…

the genus Cuscuta. It is a leafless parasitical vine with yellowish threadlike stems. It attaches itself to some other plant, as to flax, goldenrod, etc., and decaying at the root. is nourished by the plant that supports it.

produce seeds on the back of the leaf, and to certain Batrachia, the ova of which become attached to the skin of the back of the parent, where they develop; dorsiparous.

The bar, or crosspiece, of a carriage, to which the singletrees are attached.