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or practice of opening cysts; esp., the operation of cutting into the bladder, as for the extraction of a calculus.

A variety of starch extracted from the dahlia; -- called also inulin. See Inulin.

A young person, either male or female, of noble or gentle extraction; as, Damsel Pepin; Damsel Richard, Prince of Wales. [Obs.]

A colorless crystalline substance, C9H6O4, extracted from daphnin.

A dark green bitter resin extracted from the mezereon (Daphne mezereum) and regarded as the essential principle of the plant. [R.]

A white crystalline glucoside extracted from the bastard hemp (Datisca cannabina).

To prepare by boiling; to digest in hot or boiling water; to extract the strength or flavor of by boiling; to make an infusion of.

The act or process of boiling anything in a watery fluid to extract its virtues. In decoction . . . it either purgeth at the top or settleth at the bottom. Bacon.

To cause to grow less; to diminish gradually; as, extravagance decreases one's means. That might decrease their present store. Prior.

Large; chief; -- applied to an extraordinary billow, supposed by some to be every tenth in order. [R.] Also used substantively. "Such decuman billows." Gauden. "The baffled decuman." Lowell.

To free from extraneous or polluting matter; to clear; to purify, as from that which materializes. We defecate the notion from materiality. Glanvill. Defecated from all the impurities of sense. Bp. Warburton.

To extract the germs from, as from wheat grains.

misolid emulsion produced by the treatment of certain skins with oxidized fish oil, which extracts their soluble albuminoids. It was formerly solely a by-product of chamois leather manufacture, but is now made for its own sake, being valuable as a dressing for hides.

ental organization of the novelist must be characterized, to speak craniologically, by an extraordinary development of the passion for delitescency. Sir W. Scott.

The act of giving birth; parturition; the expulsion or extraction of a fetus and its membranes.

A poisonous alkaloid extracted from the stavesacre (Delphinium staphisagria), as a colorless amorphous powder.

One whose business it is to clean, extract, or repair natural teeth, and to make and insert artificial ones; a dental surgeon.

A vessel used in alchemy to extract oils.

Derivation, as from an ancestor; procedure by generation; lineage; birth; extraction. Dryden.

A style of dress prevalent at the time of the French Directory, characterized by great extravagance of design and imitating the Greek and Roman costumes.