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Any critical period. It is your lot, as it was mine, to live during one of the grand climacterics of the world. Southey. Grand or Great climacteric, the sixty-third year of human life. I should hardly yield my rigid fibers to be regenerated by them; nor begin, in my grand climacteric, to squall in their new accents, or…

The science which treats of climates and investigates their phenomena and causes. Brande & C.

The compressed clay of coal strata. Brande & C.

s, or states, having different interests. A coalition of the puritan and the blackleg. J. Randolph. The coalition between the religious and worldly enemies of popery. Macaulay.

Westminster; -- so called because built on the site of the cockpit of Whitehall palace. Brande & C.

A beverage made of brandy, whisky, or gin, iced, flavored, and sweetened. [U. S.]

on the northern coasts of Europe and America. It is especially abundant and large on the Grand Bank of Newfoundland. It is salted and dried in large quantities.

A kind of French brandy, so called from the town of Cognac.

A brief account of transactions or events written hastily, as if for a memorandum; -- usually in the plural; as, Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic War.

One intrusted with a commission, now only a small commission, as an errand; esp., an attendant or subordinate employee in a public office, hotel, or the like. The commissionaire familiar to European travelers performs miscellaneous services as a light porter, messenger, solicitor for hotels, etc.

A memorandum; something to be frequently consulted or referred to. Whatever, in my reading, occurs concerning this our fellow creature, I do never fail to set it down by way of commonplace. Swift. Commonplace book, a book in which records are made of things to be remembered.

ders, the members of the lowest grades as distinguished from knights commanders, knights grand cross, and the like.

th, strength, etc.; predicament; rank; position, estate. I am in my condition A prince, Miranda; I do think, a king. Shak. And O, what man's condition can be worse Than his whom plenty starves and blessings curse Cowley. The new conditions of life. Darwin.

o arrive at by conjecture; to infer on slight evidence; to surmise; to guess; to form, at random, opinions concerning. Human reason can then, at the best, but conjecture what will be. South.

cation; combination. The consolidation of the marble and of the stone did not fall out at random. Woodward. The consolidation of the great European monarchies. Hallam.

o expend; to waste; to burn up; to eat up; to devour. If he were putting to my house the brand That shall consume it. Shak. Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth consume. Matt. vi. 20 (Rev. Ver. ). Let me alone . . . that I may consume them. Ex. xxxii. 10.

One of the grand divisions of land on the globe; the main land; specifically (Phys. Geog.), a large body of land differing from an island, not merely in its size, but in its structure, which is that of a large basin bordered by mountain chains; as, the continent of North America.

dscapes. W. Irwing. Continual proportionals (Math.), quantities in continued proportion. Brande & C.

The space between the strands on the outside of a rope. Knight.

il, social, political, or ecclesiastical. He set himself to the making of good laws in a grand convention of his nobles. Sir R. Baker. A convention of delegates from all the States, to meet in Philadelphia, for the sole and express purpose of reserving the federal system, and correcting its defects. W. Irving.…