Search the Dictionary

A periodic publication, containing records of discoveries, transactions of societies, etc.; as "Annals of Science."

To be or act in compliance with, in fulfillment or satisfaction of, as an order, obligation, demand; as, he answered my claim upon him; the servant answered the bell. This proud king . . . studies day and night To answer all the debts he owes unto you. Shak.

A suffix sometimes marking the agent for action; as, merchant, covenant, servant, pleasant, etc. Cf. -ent.

Opposition of action; counteraction or contrariety of things or principles.

A medicine which opposes the action of another medicine or of a poison when absorbed into the blood or tissues.

Resembling anthrax in action; of the nature of anthrax; as, an anthracoid microbe.

A petrifaction of the human body, or of any portion of it.

To be before in doing; to do or take before another; to preclude or prevent by prior action. To anticipate and prevent the duke's purpose. R. Hall. He would probably have died by the hand of the executioner, if indeed the executioner had not been anticipated by the populace. Macaulay.

pancreatic digestion, differing from hemipeptone in not being decomposed by the continued action of pancreatic juice.

Opposed to, or checking motion; acting upward; -- applied to an inverted action of the intestinal tube.

Opposition by which the quality opposed asquires strength; resistance or reaction roused by opposition or by the action of an opposite principle or quality.

Counteracting, or preserving from, putrefaction; antiseptic.

A substance which prevents or retards putrefaction, or destroys, or protects from, putrefactive organisms; as, salt, carbolic acid, alcohol, cinchona.

Counteracting or preventing putrefaction, or a putrescent tendency in the system; antiputrefactive. Antiseptic surgery, that system of surgical practice which insists upon a systematic use of antiseptics in the performance of operations and the dressing of wounds.

A tense in the Greek language, which expresses an action as completed in past time, but leaves it, in other respects, wholly indeterminate.

To mimic, as an ape imitates human actions; to imitate or follow servilely or irrationally. "How he apes his sire." Addison. The people of England will not ape the fashions they have never tried. Burke.

The practice of aping; an apish action. Coleridge.

An anomalous state of refraction caused by the absence of the crystalline lens, as after operations for cataract. The remedy is the use of powerful convex lenses. Dunglison.

Assurance of manner or of action; self-possession.

The action of apophlegmatics.