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Of an uncommon nature; unusually excellent; valuable to a degree seldom found. Rare work, all filled with terror and delight. Cowley. Above the rest I judge one beauty rare. Dryden.

Finely; excellently; with rare skill. See 3d Rare, 2. The person who played so rarely on the flageolet. Sir W. Scott. The rest of the spartments are rarely gilded. Evelyn.

to ostensible; as, the real reason; real Madeira wine; real ginger. Whose perfection far excelled Hers in all real dignity. Milton.

e. [Scot.] A huge pewter measuring pot which, in the language of the hostess, reamed with excellent claret. Sir W. Scott.

g to procure, a favorable reception, or to secure acceptance and adoption; as, he brought excellent recommendations.

o reduce the intensity of heat. "An ancient but reduced family." Sir W. Scott. Nothing so excellent but a man may fasten upon something belonging to it, to reduce it. Tillotson. Having reduced Their foe to misery beneath their fears. Milton. Hester Prynne was shocked at the condition to which she found the clergyman re…

and Australian warblers of the genera Acrocephalus, Calamoherpe, and Arundinax. They are excellent singers. -- Sea-sand reed (Bot.), a kind of coarse grass (Ammophila arundinacea). See Beach grass, under Beach. -- Wood reed grass (Bot.), a tall, elegant grass (Cinna arundinacea), common in moist woods.…

To improve in accuracy, delicacy, or excellence. Chaucer refined on Boccace, and mended his stories. Dryden. But let a lord once own the happy lines, How the wit brightens! How the style refines! Pope.

Corrected; amended; restored to purity or excellence; said, specifically, of the whole body of Protestant churches originating in the Reformation. Also, in a more restricted sense, of those who separated from Luther on the doctrine of consubstantiation, etc., and carried the Reformation, as they claimed, to a higher po…

A taste for; liking; appetite; fondness. A relish for whatever was excelent in arts. Macaulay. I have a relish for moderate praise, because it bids fair to be jCowper.

Moderate in degree of excellence or in number; as, a respectable performance; a respectable audience. --Re*spect"a*ble*ness,n. -- Re*spect"a*bly, adv.

ed; esp., that which is offered or given in return for some service or attainment, as for excellence in studies, for the return of something lost, etc.; recompense; requital. Thou returnest From flight, seditious angel, to receive Thy merited reward. Milton. Rewards and punishments do always presuppose something willin…

to have been borrowed from Provence in France. W. Irving. Whose dancing dogs in rigadoons excel. Wolcott.

To attain to a better social position; to be promoted; to excel; to succeed. Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall. Shak.

öl.) (a) Any one of several species of American gurnards of the genus Prionotus. They are excellent food fishes. Called also wingfish. The name is also applied to a European gurnard.

ral species of California sciænoid food fishes, especially Roncador Stearnsi, which is an excellent market fish, and the red roncador (Corvina, or Johnius, saturna).

ts, and more abundantly about New Zealand, where it is called frostfish and considered an excellent food fish.

A Mediterranean food fish (Sparisoma scarus) od excellent quality and highly valued by the Romans; -- called also parrot fish.

Nice; particular; fastidious; excellent; fine. [Slang]

Next to the first in value, power, excellence, dignity, or rank; secondary; subordinate; inferior. May the day when we become the second people upon earth . . . be the day of our utter extirpation. Landor.