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An artifice; trick; tricky device; subterfuge. For all yuor brags, hooks, and crooks. Cranmer.

Not straightforward; deviating from rectitude; distorted from the right. They are a perverse and crooked generation. Deut. xxxii. 5.

The condition or quality of being crooked; hence, deformity of body or of mind; deviation from moral rectitude; perverseness.

An appendage or ornament or anything in the form of a cross; a badge or ornamental device of the general shape of a cross; hence, such an ornament, even when varying considerably from that form; thus, the Cross of the British Order of St. George and St. Michael consist of a central medallion with seven arms radiating f…

iting care or nicety; artfully constructed; elaborate; wrought with elegance or skill. To devise curious works. Ex. xxxv. 32 His body couched in a curious bed. Shak.

part from a tangent drawn to the curve at that point. Aberrancy of curvature (Geom.), the deviation of a curve from a curcular form. -Absolute curvature. See under Absolute. -- Angle of curvature (Geom.), one that expresses the amount of curvature of a curve. -- Chord of curvature. See under Chord. -- Circle of curv…

Any device for stopping or changing a current, as of grain or water in a spout.

Any device for detecting the presence of electric waves. The influence of electric waves on the resistance of a particular kind of electric circuit, on the magnetization of steel, on the polarization of an electrolytic cell, or on the electric condition of a vacuum has been applied in the various cymoscopes.…

That with which one dabs; hence, a pad or other device used by printers, engravers, etc., as for dabbing type or engraved plates with ink.

r its quickness in diving; -- called also dapchick, dobchick, dipchick, didapper, dobber, devil-diver, hell-diver, and pied-billed grebe.

be held in subjection by such a dapper little man. Milton. The dapper ditties that I wont devise. Spenser. Sharp-nosed, dapper steam yachts. Julian Hawthorne.

s or trouble. A day of clouds and of thick darkness. Joel. ii. 2. Prince of darkness, the Devil; Satan. "In the power of the Prince of darkness." Locke.

The spirit of the sea; sea devil; -- a term used by sailors. This same Davy Jones, according to the mythology of sailors, is the fiend that presides over all the evil spirits of the deep, and is seen in various shapes warning the devoted wretch of death and woe. Smollett. Davy Jones's Locker, the ocean, or bottom of th…

other, or causes him to believe what is false; a contrivance to entrap; deception; a wily device; fraud. Making the ephah small and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit. Amos viii. 5. Friendly to man, far from deceit or guile. Milton. Yet still we hug the dear deceit. N. Cotton.

The act of deviating or turning aside; oblique motion; obliquity; withdrawal. The declination of atoms in their descent. Bentley. Every declination and violation of the rules. South.

To turn or bend aside; to deviate; to stray; to withdraw; as, a line that declines from straightness; conduct that declines from sound morals. Yet do I not decline from thy testimonies. Ps. cxix. 157.

Deviation from a horizontal line; gradual descent of surface; inclination downward; slope; -- opposed to acclivity, or ascent; the same slope, considered as descending, being a declivity, which, considered as ascending, is an acclivity.

A device for restoring a coherer to its normal condition after it has been affected by an electric wave, a process usually accomplished by some method of tapping or shaking, or by rotation of the coherer.

To turn aside; to deviate from a right or a horizontal line, or from a proper position, course or direction; to swerve. At some part of the Azores, the needle deflecteth not, but lieth in the true meridian. Sir T. Browne. To deflect from the line of truth and reason. Warburton.

Turned aside; deviating from a direct line or course.