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A kind of buttress of masonry to strengthen a revetment wall.

Power or value sufficient to obviate any effect; equal weight, strength, or value; equivalent; compensation; requital. [Obs.] Surely, the present pleasure of a sinful act is a poor countervail for the bitterness of the review. South.

picture. (c) (Mil.) The faculty or the act of comprehending at a glance the weakness or strength of a military position, of a certain arrangement of troops, the most advantageous position for a battlefield, etc.

achment of troops sent for the protection of another detachment, as of men working in the trenches. -- To cover into, to transfer to; as, to cover into the treasury.

Strength; might; secret power. [Obs.] Chaucer.

rsonal knowledge; belief; credit; confidence. To give credence to the Scripture miracles. Trench. An assertion which might easily find credence. Macualay.

An indented or zigzaged line of intrenchment.

With a constantly increasing volume of voice; with gradually increasing strength and fullness of tone; -- a direction for the performance of music, indicated by the mark, or by writing the word on the score.

phaltus. Milton. As a cresset true that darts its length Of beamy luster from a tower of strength. Wordsworth.

To deprive of strength, activity, or capability for service or use; to disable; to deprive of resources; as, to be financially crippled. More serious embarrassments . . . were crippling the energy of the settlement in the Bay. Palfrey. An incumbrance which would permanently cripple the body politic. Macaulay.…

d. (Her.) See under Forked. -- Cross frog. See under Frog. -- Cross furrow, a furrow or trench cut across other furrows to receive the water running in them and conduct it to the side of the field. -- Cross handle, a handle attached transversely to the axis of a tool, as in the augur. Knight. -- Cross lode (Mining)…

Attended with cruetly; painful; harsh. You have seen cruel proof of this man's strength. Shak.

ds. The argument . . . is in very truth not logical and single, but moral and cumulative. Trench.

A drain trench, in a ditch or moat; -- called also cuvette.

his natural eloquence, that he cuts doun the finest orator." Addison (c) To lessen; to retrench; to curtail; as, to cut down expenses. (d) (Naut.) To raze; as, to cut down a frigate into a sloop. -- To cut the knot or the Gordian knot, to dispose of a difficulty summarily; to solve it by prompt, arbitrary action, rat…

rth of a blast furnace. Dam plate (Blast Furnace), an iron plate in front of the dam, to strengthen it.

he fields are dank and ways are mire. Milton. Cheerless watches on the cold, dank ground. Trench.

To impair the strength of; to weaken; to enfeeble; as, to debilitate the body by intemperance. Various ails debilitate the mind. Jenyns. The debilitated frame of Mr. Bertram was exhausted by this last effort. Sir W. Scott.

Gradual failure of health, strength, soundness, prosperity, or of any species of excellence or perfection; tendency toward dissolution or extinction; corruption; rottenness; decline; deterioration; as, the decay of the body; the decay of virtue; the decay of the Roman empire; a castle in decay. Perhaps my God, though h…

r appearance. Language altogether deceptive, and hiding the deeper reality from our eyes. Trench. Deceptive cadence (Mus.), a cadence on the subdominant, or in some foreign key, postponing the final close.