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something doubtful; esp., one under conditions determined by the experimenter; an act or operation undertaken in order to discover some unknown principle or effect, or to test, establish, or illustrate some suggest or known truth; practical test; poof. A political experiment can not be made in a laboratory, not determ…

Taught by use, practice, or experience, experienced; having facility of operation or performance from practice; knowing and ready from much practice; clever; skillful; as, an expert surgeon; expert in chess or archery. A valiant and most expert gentleman. Shak. What practice, howsoe'er expert In fitting aptest words to…

erward; in consequence of a subsequent act; retrospective. Ex post facto law, a law which operates by after enactment. The phrase is popularly applied to any law, civil or criminal, which is enacted with a retrospective effect, and with intention to produce that effect; but in its true application, as employed in Ameri…

The act of expressing; expression; utterance; representation. [Obs.] An operation more divine Than breath or pen can give expressure to. Shak.

The removal by operation of a portion of a limb; particularly, the removal of a portion of a bone in the vicinity of a joint; the act or process of cutting out.

The act of operation of drying; evaporation or expulsion of moisture; state of being dried up; dryness. Sir T. Browne.

The operation of stretching a broken bone so as to bring the fragments into the same straight line.

ad; wide; comprehensive; as, an extensive farm; an extensive lake; an extensive sphere of operations; extensive benevolence; extensive greatness.

of that living intellect that bred them. Milton. The extraction of roots. (Math.) (a) The operation of finding the root of a given number or quantity. (b) The method or rule by which the operation is performed; evolution.

The act or operation of burning up. Bailey.

quality of being easily performed; freedom from difficulty; ease; as, the facility of an operation. The facility with which government has been overturned in France. Burke .

the death of Mr. B., the annuuity, which he had so long received, fell in. (d) To become operative. "The reversion, to which he had been nominated twenty years before, fell in." Macaulay. -- To fall into one's hands, to pass, often suddenly or unexpectedly, into one's ownership or control; as, to spike cannon when th…

ter has gone out; hence: To fang a pump, to supply it with the water necessary to make it operate. [Scot.]

To influence in an uncontrollable manner; to operate on by some powerful or irresistible charm; to bewitch; to enchant. It has been almost universally believed that . . . serpents can stupefy and fascinate the prey which they are desirous to obtain. Griffith (Cuvier).

To supply (the material to be operated upon) to a machine; as, to feed paper to a printing press.

An auxiliary part of a machine which supplies or leads along the material operated upon.

The operation of shaving or smoothing the surface of undried clay ware.

An unresticted or favorable opportunity for action, operation, or achievement; province; room. Afforded a clear field for moral experiments. Macaulay.

One who dances at the opera, not singly, but in groups or figures; an accessory character on the stage, who figures in its scenes, but has nothing to say; hence, one who figures in any scene, without taking a prominent part.

The last composition performed in any act of an opera.