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A sentence, or passage, considered as the expression of a thought; a maxim; a saying; a toast.

To examine critically or minutely; to scrutinize. Sifting the very utmost sentence and syllable. Hooker. Opportunity I here have had To try thee, sift thee. Milton. Let him but narrowly sift his ideas. I. Taylor. To sift out, to search out with care, as if by sifting.

for the poor renown of being smart Would leave a sting within a brother's heart Young. A sentence or two, . . . which I thought very smart. Addison.

An impropriety or incongruity of language in the combination of words or parts of a sentence; esp., deviation from the idiom of a language or from the rules of syntax. A barbarism may be in one word; a solecism must be of more. Johnson.

True; faithful; trustworthy. [Obs. or Scot.] The sentence [meaning] of it sooth is, out of doubt. Chaucer. That shall I sooth (said he) to you declare. Spensser.

distance, or in a state of concealment; to espy; to see. One in reading, skipped over all sentences where he spied a note of admiration. Swift.

To point, as a composition; to punctuate. [R.] If his sentences were properly stopped. Landor.

A portion of music divided off by a double bar; a complete musical period or sentence; a movement, or any rounded subdivision of a movement. Their heavenly harps a lower strain began. Dryden.

les, in a substance or body; as, the structure of a rock or a mineral; the structure of a sentence. It [basalt] has often a prismatic structure. Dana.

cking with the necessary material. An Eastern king put a judge to death for an iniquitous sentence, and ordered his hide to be stuffed into a cushion, and placed upon the tribunal. Swift.

Something subjoined; as, a subjunction to a sentence.

ected with it by if, that, though, lest, unless, except, until, etc., as in the following sentence: "If there were no honey, they [bees] would have no object in visiting the flower." Lubbock. In some languages, as in Latin and Greek, the subjunctive is often independent of any other verb, being used in wishes, commands…

A mark of a line or lines under a word in a sentence, or under another line; underlining.

Tending to subordinate; expressing subordination; used to introduce a subordinate sentence; as, a subordinative conjunction.

subscribe a covenant or contract; a man subscribes a bond. All the bishops subscribed the sentence. Milman.

Of punishment, or sentence of punishment.

flatterer of princes and great men. A sycophant will everything admire: Each verse, each sentence, sets his soul on fire. Dryden.

A small part of a sentence or discourse; anything concise or short; a particle. Before any syllable of the law of God was written. Hooker. Who dare speak One syllable against him Shak.

A derangement or confusion of any kind, as of words in a sentence, or of humors in the eye. Sparkling synchysis (Med.), a condition in which the vitreous humor is softened and contains sparkling scales of cholesterin.

The interjunction, or joining, of words in uttering the clauses of sentences.