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To put a construction upon; to explain the sense or intention of; to interpret; to understand. Thus we are put to construe and paraphrase our own words to free ourselves either from the ignorance or malice of our enemies. Bp. Stilingfleet. And to be dull was construed to be good. Pope.

hich is unforeseen, undetermined, or dependent on something future; a contingency. His understanding could almost pierce into future contingets. South.

ithin their walls so long. Dryden. The contempt of all other knowledge . . . coops the understanding up within narrow bounds. Locke.

resembling the flame of a candle, sometimes seen in churchyards and other damp places, superstitiously regarded as portending death. -- Corpse gate, the gate of a burial place through which the dead are carried, often having a covered porch; -- called also lich gate.

delivered to the person who had lent the king money on the account; - - called also counterstock. [Eng.]

r and October, when in the constellations Sagittarius and Pisces. Its cause is not yet understood. Called also Gegenschein.

Could; was able; knew or known; understood. [Obs.] Above all other one Daniel He loveth, for he couth well Divine, that none other couth; To him were all thing couth, As he had it of God's grace. Gower.

in crape is twice a saint in lawn. Pope. Crape myrtle (Bot.), a very ornamental shrub (Lagerströmia Indica) from the East Indies, often planted in the Southern United States. Its foliage is like that of the myrtle, and the flower has wavy crisped petals. -- Oriental crape. See Canton crape.

o as to involve ludicrous combinations of ideas. Pepys. To be at cross-purposes, to misunderstand or to act counter to one another without intending it; -- said of persons.

A staff used in cudgel play, shorter than the quarterstaff, and wielded with one hand; hence, any heavy stick used as a weapon. He getteth him a grievous crabtree cudgel and . . . falls to rating of them as if they were dogs. Bunyan. Cudgel play, a fight or sportive contest with cudgels. -- To cross the cudgels, to fo…

Lit., for whose benefit; incorrectly understood, it came to be used in the sense, of what good or use; and hence, (what) purpose; object; specif., the ultimate object of life.

rtion severed or cut off; a division; as, a cut of beef; a cut of timber. It should be understood, moreover, . . . that the group are not arbitrary cuts, but natural groups or types. Dana.

ay; to tamper; to meddle. "Dabbling here and there with the text." Atterbury. During the ferst year at Dumfries, Burns for the ferst time began to dabble in politics. J. C. Shairp.

Not clear to the understanding; not easily The dark problems of existence. Shairp. What may seem dark at the first, will afterward be found more plain. Hooker. What's your dark meaning, mouse, of this light word Shak.

Unwillingness to hear; voluntary rejection of what is addressed to the understanding. Nervous deafness, a variety of deafness dependent upon morbid change in some portion of the nervous system, especially the auditory nerve.

s heard to ring. Mickle. -- Death candle, a light like that of a candle, viewed by the superstitious as presaging death. -- Death damp, a cold sweat at the coming on of death. -- Death fire, a kind of ignis fatuus supposed to forebode death. And round about in reel and rout, The death fires danced at night. Coleridge…

Tengmalm's or Richardson's owl (Nyctale Tengmalmi); -- so called from a superstition of the North American Indians that its note presages death.

a ticking sound, which is a call of the sexes to each other, but has been imagined by superstitious people to presage death.

Liable to defect; imperfect. [R.] "A defectible understanding." Jer. Taylor.

" an exact definition; a loose definition. Definition being nothing but making another understand by words what the term defined stands for. Locke.