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ing; affording great pleasure and satisfaction. "Delightful bowers." Spenser. "Delightful fruit." Milton.

ry up; to deprive or exhaust of moisture; to preserve by drying; as, to desiccate fish or fruit. Bodies desiccated by heat or age. Bacon.

A service of pastry, fruits, or sweetmeats, at the close of a feast or entertainment; pastry, fruits, etc., forming the last course at dinner. "An 't please your honor," quoth the peasant, "This same dessert is not so pleasant." Pope. Dessert spoon, a spoon used in eating dessert; a spoon intermediate in size between a…

The fruit of certain species of bramble (Rubus); in England, the fruit of R. cæsius, which has a glaucous bloom; in America, that of R. canadensis and R. hispidus, species of low blackberries.

6 (so called from turning the plane of polarization to the right), occurring in many ripe fruits. Dextrose and levulose are obtained by the inversion of cane sugar or sucrose, and hence called invert sugar. Dextrose is chiefly obtained by the action of heat and acids on starch, and hence called also starch sugar. It is…

To ripen; to mature. [Obs.] Well-digested fruits. Jer. Taylor.

the power to cause or promote digestion; as, the digestive ferments. Digestive cheese and fruit there sure will be. B. Jonson. Digestive apparatus, the organs of food digestion, esp. the alimentary canal and glands connected with it. -- Digestive salt, the chloride of potassium.

East Indies, some species of which produce a fragrant resin, other species wood oil. The fruit has two long wings.

t thoroughly considered the value, our disappointment will be greater our pleasure in the fruition of them. Addison. In disappointment thou canst bless. Keble.

A small napkin, used at table with the fruit, etc.; -- commonly colored and fringed.

A species of palm tree (Hyphæne Thebaica), highly valued for the fibrous pulp of its fruit, which has the flavor of gingerbread, and is largely eaten in Egypt and Abyssinia. [Written also doum palm.]

To fall, in general, literally or figuratively; as, ripe fruit drops from a tree; wise words drop from the lips. Mutilations of which the meaning has dropped out of memory. H. Spencer. When the sound of dropping nuts is heard. Bryant.

Producing, or pertaining to, drupes; having the form of drupes; as, drupaceous trees or fruits.

A fruit consisting of pulpy, coriaceous, or fibrous exocarp, without valves, containing a nut or stone with a kernel. The exocarp is succulent in the plum, cherry, apricot, peach, etc.; dry and subcoriaceous in the almond; and fibrous in the cocoanut.

led in soup, or as a sort of pudding; often, a cover of paste inclosing an apple or other fruit, and boiled or baked; as, an apple dumpling.

The fruit of the durio. It is oval or globular, and eight or ten inches long. It has a hard prickly rind, containing a soft, cream-colored pulp, of a most delicious flavor and a very offensive odor. The seeds are roasted and eaten like chestnuts.

A fruit tree (D. zibethinus, the only species known) of the Indian Archipelago. It bears the durian.

Dutchman's laudanum (Bot.), a West Indian passion flower (Passiflora Murucuja); also, its fruit. -- Dutchman's pipe (Bot.), an American twining shrub (Aristolochia Sipho). Its flowers have their calyx tubes curved like a tobacco pipe.

ng or near the first; -- opposed to Ant: late; as, the early bird; an early spring; early fruit. Early and provident fear is the mother of safety. Burke. The doorsteps and threshold with the early grass springing up about them. Hawthorne.

sting of the single species Ecballium agreste (or Elaterium), the squirting cucumber. Its fruit, when ripe, bursts and violently ejects its seeds, together with a mucilaginous juice, from which elaterium, a powerful cathartic medicine, is prepared.