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In a wider sense, an extensive group of birds including the ostriches, cassowaries, emus, moas, and allied birds incapable of flight. In this sense it is equivalent to Ratitæ, or Dromæognathæ.

test by writing one's name beneath; as, officers subscribe their official acts, and secretaries and clerks subscribe copies or records.

ip line. He employed the remittances from Spain to subsidize a large body of German mercenaries. Prescott.

That which sullies or defiles. [Obs.] It is the privilege of the celestial luminaries to receive no tincture, sullage, or difilement from the most noisome sinks and dunghills here below. South.

To examine and ascertain, as the boundaries and royalties of a manor, the tenure of the tenants, and the rent and value of the same. [Eng.] Jacob (Law Dict.).

A collective fleshy fruit, in which the ovaries are hidden within a hollow receptacle, as in the fig.

A kind of aggregate fruit in which the ovaries cohere in a solid mass, with a slender receptacle, as in the magnolia; also, a similar multiple fruit, as a mulberry.

hilanthropy. Macaulay. In popular literary acceptation, and as employed in special dictionaries of such words, synonyms are words sufficiently alike in general signification to be liable to be confounded, but yet so different in special definition as to require to be distinguished. G. P. Marsh.

l.), the sense of touch, or pressure sense. See Touch. The delicacy of the tactile sense varies on different parts of the skin; it is geatest on the forehead, temples and back of the forearm. H. N. Martin.

ir by a spark, or to pass from a body of greater to one of less electrical potential. It varies as the quantity of electricity upon a given area. Tension brace, or Tension member (Engin.), a brace or member designed to resist tension, or subjected to tension, in a structure. -- Tension rod (Engin.), an iron rod used a…

Corruption is a reciprocal to generation, and they two are as nature's two terms, or boundaries. Bacon.

al celebrated annually by the Romans on February 23 in honor of Terminus, the god of boundaries.

The Roman divinity who presided over boundaries, whose statue was properly a short pillar terminating in the bust of a man, woman, satyr, or the like, but often merely a post or stone stuck in the ground on a boundary line.

A ternion; the number three; three things taken together; a triad. Some in ternaries, some in pairs, and some single. Holder.

l in which the lands of private persons or corporations are described by their site, boundaries, number of acres, or the like. [Written also terrar.]

Geol.) See under Age, 8. -- Tertiary color, a color produced by the mixture of two secondaries. "The so-called tertiary colors are citrine, russet, and olive." Fairholt. -- Tertiary period. (Geol.) (a) The first period of the age of mammals, or of the Cenozoic era. (b) The rock formation of that period; -- called als…

l air (Physiol.), the air which passes in and out of the lungs in ordinary breathing. It varies from twenty to thirty cubic inches. -- Tidal basin, a dock that is filled at the rising of the tide. -- Tidal wave. (a) See Tide wave, under Tide. Cf. 4th Bore. (b) A vast, swift wave caused by an earthquake or some extrao…

ccurrences of two consecutive maxima of the resultant wave at the same place. Its length varies as the components of sun and moon waves approach to, or recede from, one another. A retardation from this cause is called the lagging of the tide, while the acceleration of the recurrence of high water is termed the priming…

A money of account in Persia, whose value varies greatly at different times and places. Its average value may be reckoned at about two and a half dollars.

iscourse, especially in a slight or casual manner; -- often with on or upon. If the antiquaries have touched upon it, they immediately quitted it. Addison.