Search the Dictionary

That quality in words or things which presents what is offensive to chasity or purity of mind; obscene or impure lanquage or acts; moral impurity; lewdness; obsceneness; as, the obscenity of a speech, or a picture. Mr.Cowley asserts plainly, that obscenity has no place in wit. Dryden. No pardon vile obscenity should fi…

Denoting opposition or negation. [Obs.] The questions no way touch upon puritanism, either off or on. Bp. Sanderson. From off, off from; off. "A live coal...taken with the tongs from off the altar." Is. vi. 6. -- Off and on. (a) Not constantly; not regularly; now and then; occasionally. (b) (Naut.) On different tacks,…

An instrument for ascertaining the weight and purity of oil; an elaiometer.

re reared in pots. -- Orchard oriole (Zool.), a bright-colored American oriole (Icterus spurius), which frequents orchards. It is smaller and darker thah the Baltimore oriole.

The chief city of France. Paris green. See under Green, n. -- Paris white (Chem.), purified chalk used as a pigment; whiting; Spanish white.

sonal, or characteristic possession and use; not owned in common or in participation. And purify unto himself a peculiar people. Titus ii. 14. Hymns . . . that Christianity hath peculiar unto itself. Hooker.

without taste or odor, derived from petroleum by distilling off the lighter portions and purifying the residue. It is a yellowish, fatlike mass, transparent in thin layers, and somewhat fluorescent. It is used as a bland protective dressing, and as a substitute for fatty materials in ointments. U. S. Pharm.…

Spurious philosophy; the love or practice of sophistry. Carlyle.

al from which a dye, a paint, or the like, may be prepared; particularly, the refined and purified coloring matter ready for mixing with an appropriate vehicle.

To set in, or punish with, the pillory. "Hungering for Puritans to pillory." Macaulay.

Made of pinchbeck; sham; cheap; spurious; unreal. "A pinchbeck throne." J. A. Symonds.

That which taints or destroys moral purity or health; as, the poison of evil example; the poison of sin. Poison ash. (Bot.) (a) A tree of the genus Amyris (A. balsamifera) found in the West Indies, from the trunk of which a black liquor distills, supposed to have poisonous qualities. (b) The poison sumac (Rhus venenata…

ng, or the state of being polluted (in any sense of the verb); defilement; uncleanness; impurity.

niously exact in the observance of rules; a formalist; -- formerly applied to the English Puritans. The most dissolute cavaliers stood aghast at the dissoluteness of the emancipated precisian. Macaulay.

To denounce and condemn; to interdict; to prohibit; as, the Puritans proscribed theaters. The Arian doctrines were proscribed and anathematized in the famous Council of Nice. Waterland.

A combining form or prefix signifying false, counterfeit, pretended, spurious; as, pseudo-apostle, a false apostle; pseudo- clergy, false or spurious clergy; pseudo-episcopacy, pseudo-form, pseudo-martyr, pseudo-philosopher. Also used adjectively.

A false writing; a spurious document; a forgery.

ce of oxidizing substances, by which it is freed from a portion of its carbon and other impurities. Puddling furnace, a reverberatory furnace in which cast iron is converted into wrought iron or into steel by puddling.

Purified; refined. [Obs.] "Bread of pured wheat." "Pured gold." Chaucer.

f purging; the act of clearing, cleansing, or putifying, by separating and carrying off impurities, or whatever is superfluous; the evacuation of the bowels.