Search the Dictionary

s. Opposed to exoteric. Enough if every age produce two or three critics of this esoteric class, with here and there a reader to understand them. De Quincey.

Distinguished among others of the same class or kind; special; concerning a species or a single object; principal; particular; as, in an especial manner or degree.

The constituent quality or qualities which belong to any object, or class of objects, or on which they depend for being what they are (distinguished as real essence); the real being, divested of all logical accidents; that quality which constitutes or marks the true nature of anything; distinctive character; hence, vir…

Belonging to the essence, or that which makes an object, or class of objects, what it is. Majestic as the voice sometimes became, there was forever in it an essential character of plaintiveness. Hawthorne.

The great classes or orders of a community or state (as the clergy, the nobility, and the commonalty of England) or their representatives who administer the government; as, the estates of the realm (England), which are (1) the lords spiritual, (2) the lords temporal, (3) the commons.

nd rules concerting duty, whether true or false; rules of practice in respect to a single class of human actions; as, political or social ethics; medical ethics. The completeness and consistency of its morality is the peculiar praise of the ethics which the Bible has taught. I. Taylor.

In an ethnological manner; by ethnological classification; as, one belonging ethnologically to an African race.

A male of the human species castrated; commonly, one of a class of such persons, in Oriental countries, having charge of the women's apartments. Some of them, in former times, gained high official rank.

One who affects excessive refinement and elegance of language; -- applied esp. to a class of writers, in the age of Elizabeth, whose productions are marked by affected conceits and high-flown diction.

ons, or acquirements; to be distinguished by superiority; as, to excel in mathematics, or classics. Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel. Gen. xlix. 4. Then peers grew proud in horsemanship t' excel. Pope.

exclusion; restriction by taking out something which would otherwise be included, as in a class, statement, rule.

Any one of a large class of substances obtained by extraction, and consisting largely of nitrogenous hydrocarbons, such as xanthin, hypoxanthin, and creatin extractives from muscle tissue.

ture, juice, or gum, as through pores or incisions; also, the substance exuded. Resins, a class of proximate principles, existing in almost all plants and appearing on the external surface of many of them in the form of exudations. Am. Cyc.

ural function; especially, an original mental power or capacity for any of the well-known classes of mental activity; psychical or soul capacity; capacity for any of the leading kinds of soul activity, as knowledge, feeling, volition; intellectual endowment or gift; power; as, faculties of the mind or the soul. But kno…

on. (c) To come within; to be ranged or reckoned with; to be subordinate to in the way of classification; as, these substances fall under a different class or order. -- To fall upon. (a) To attack. [See To fall on.] (b) To attempt; to have recourse to. "I do not intend to fall upon nice disquisitions." Holder. (c) To…

One who fancies or has a special liking for, or interest in, a particular object or class or objects; hence, one who breeds and keeps for sale birds and animals; as, bird fancier, dog fancier, etc.

A sort of love song or light impromptu ballad. [Obs.] Shak. The fancy, all of a class who exhibit and cultivate any peculiar taste or fancy; hence, especially, sporting characters taken collectively, or any specific class of them, as jockeys, gamblers, prize fighters, etc. At a great book sale in London, which had cong…

The disposition to favor and promote the interest of one person or family, or of one class of men, to the neglect of others having equal claims; partiality. A spirit of favoritism to the Bank of the United States. A. Hamilton.

in racing. Youatt. (c) In wrestling, boxing, etc., a term applied to the lightest of the classes into which contestants are divided; -- in contradistinction to light weight, middle weight, and heavy weight. A feather in the cap an honour, trophy, or mark of distinction. [Colloq.] -- To be in full feather, to be in ful…

e latter are also called soluble or chemical ferments, and enzymes. Ferments of the first class are as a rule simple microscopic vegetable organisms, and the fermentations which they engender are due to their growth and development; as, the acetic ferment, the butyric ferment, etc. See Fermentation. Ferments of the sec…