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To bind up; to confine; to constrict; to contract. The solid parts were to be relaxed or astricted. Arbuthnot.

A contraction of parts by applications; the action of an astringent substance on the animal economy. Dunglison.

To bind fast; to constrict; to contract; to cause parts to draw together; to compress. Which contraction . . . astringeth the moistuBacon.

The quality of being astringent; the power of contracting the parts of the body; that quality in medicines or other substances which causes contraction of the organic textures; as, the astringency of tannin.

Drawing together the tissues; binding; contracting; -- opposed to laxative; as, astringent medicines; a butter and astringent taste; astringent fruit.

A weakening or cessation of the contractile power of the heart.

Degree of atomic attraction; equivalence; valence; also (a later use) the number of atoms in an elementary molecule. See Valence.

Want of tone; weakness of the system, or of any organ, especially of such as are contractile.

A poisonous, white, crystallizable alkaloid, extracted from the Atropa belladonna, or deadly nightshade, and the Datura Stramonium, or thorn apple. It is remarkable for its power in dilating the pupil of the eye. Called also daturine.

To win the heart of; to connect by ties of love or self-interest; to attract; to fasten or bind by moral influence; -- with to; as, attached to a friend; attaching others to us by wealth or flattery. Incapable of attaching a sensible man. Miss Austen. God . . . by various ties attaches man to man. Cowper.…

hin, slender, or fine; to grow less; to lessen. The attention attenuates as its sphere contracts. Coleridge.

Attracting; drawing; attractive.

f metals, i. e., mercury, which was formerly supposed to exist in all metals, and to be extractable from them.

To wound by clandestine detraction; to censure meanly or spitefully (as absent person); to slander or speak evil of (one absent). Spenser.

One who backbites; a secret calumniator or detractor.

Secret slander; detraction. Backbiting, and bearing of false witness. Piers Plowman.

To deliver, as goods in trust, for some special object or purpose, upon a contract, expressed or implied, that the trust shall be faithfully executed on the part of the bailee, or person intrusted; as, to bail cloth to a tailor to be made into a garment; to bail goods to a carrier. Blackstone. Kent.…

of goods or money by one person to another in trust, for some special purpose, upon a contract, expressed or implied, that the trust shall be faithfully executed. Blackstone.

nce, with a poised beam, which indicates, by weights suspended from one arm, the mutual attraction of oppositely electrified surfaces. Knight. -- Balance fish. (Zoöl) See Hammerhead. -- Balance knife, a carving or table knife the handle of which overbalances the blade, and so keeps it from contact with the table. --…

point that stands backward in an arrow, fishhook, etc., to prevent it from being easily extracted. Hence: Anything which stands out with a sharp point obliquely or crosswise to something else. "Having two barbs or points." Ascham.