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The whole number of votes cast at an election, or in a given territory or electoral district. Ballot box, a box for receiving ballots.

r gate, a heavy gate to close the opening through a barrier. -- Barrier reef, a form of coral reef which runs in the general direction of the shore, and incloses a lagoon channel more or less extensive. -- To fight at barriers, to fight with a barrier between, as a martial exercise. [Obs.]

Morally low. Hence: Low-minded; unworthy; without dignity of sentiment; ignoble; mean; illiberal; menial; as, a base fellow; base motives; base occupations. "A cruel act of a base and a cowardish mind." Robynson (More's Utopia). "Base ingratitude." Milton.

e branchial arches; basicranial, situated at the base of the cranium; basifacial, basitemporal, etc.

A conception or image of consummate beauty, moral or physical, formed in the mind, free from all the deformities, defects, and blemishes seen in actual existence; an ideal or faultless standard or model.

or properties pleasing to the eye, the ear, the intellect, the æsthetic faculty, or the moral sense. Beauty consists of a certain composition of color and figure, causing delight in the beholder. Locke. The production of beauty by a multiplicity of symmetrical parts uniting in a consistent whole. Wordsworth. The old d…

To make little or less in a moral sense; to speak of in a depreciatory or contemptuous way. T. Jefferson.

To involve in moral darkness, or ignorance; to debar from intellectual light. Shall we to men benighted The lamp of life deny Heber.

phase of the doctrine of utilitarianism taught by Jeremy Bentham; the doctrine that the morality of actions is estimated and determined by their utility; also, the theory that the sensibility to pleasure and the recoil from pain are the only motives which influence human desires and actions, and that these are the suf…

A pastoral song. [Obs.]

A treatise on beasts; esp., one of the moralizing or allegorical beast tales written in the Middle Ages.

To improve the condition of, morally, physically, financially, socially, or otherwise. The constant effort of every man to better himself. Macaulay.

Hence: Morally distorted; not upright. [Poetic] I may be straight, though they themselves be bevel. Shak. A bevel angle, any angle other than one of 90º. -- Bevel wheel, a cogwheel whose working face is oblique to the axis. Knight.

the mind indifferent; bent inclination. Strong love is a bias upon the thoughts. South. Morality influences men's lives, and gives a bias to all their actions. Locke.

e, a person who is intolerant of opinions which conflict with his own, as in politics or morals; one obstinately and blindly devoted to his own church, party, belief, or opinion. To doubt, where bigots had been content to wonder and believe. Macaulay.

To oblige, restrain, or hold, by authority, law, duty, promise, vow, affection, or other moral tie; as, to bind the conscience; to bind by kindness; bound by affection; commerce binds nations to each other. Who made our laws to bind us, not himself. Milton.

A species of capsicum (Capsicum baccatum), whose small, conical, coral-red fruit is among the most piquant of all red peppers.

A climbing shrub, with oval coral-red berries (Solanum dulcamara); woody nightshade. The whole plant is poisonous, and has a taste at first sweetish and then bitter. The branches are the officinal dulcamara.

Fig.: Dismal, gloomy, or forbidding, like darkness; destitute of moral light or goodness; atrociously wicked; cruel; mournful; calamitous; horrible. "This day's black fate." "Black villainy." "Arise, black vengeance." "Black day." "Black despair." Shak.

Having a wicked, malignant disposition; morally bad.