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e line of a subject engraved on a coin or medal. It usually contains the date, place, engraver's name, etc., or other subsidiary matter. Fairholt.

e principally to the efforts of nature to effect a cure. Expectation of life, the mean or average duration of the life individuals after any specified age.

An act by which the treats of prodigies were averted among the ancient heathen. [Obs.] Hayward.

Free from any marked characteristic; average; middling; as, a fair specimen. The news is very fair and good, my lord. Shak. Fair ball. (Baseball) (a) A ball passing over the home base at the height called for by the batsman, and delivered by the pitcher while wholly within the lines of his position and facing the batsm…

t; artifice; stratagem. This is the artificialest piece of finesse to persuade men into slavery. Milton.

To hold steadily; to direct unwaveringly; to fasten, as the eye on an object, the attention on a speaker. Sat fixed in thought the mighty Stagirite. Pope. One eye on death, and one full fix'd on heaven. Young.

A flute. Flaute piccolo ( Etym: [It., little flute], an octave flute. -- Flauto traverso ( Etym: [It., transverse flute], the German flute, held laterally, instead of being played, like the old flûte a bec, with a mouth piece at the end.

; not invincibly rigid or obstinate; tractable; manageable; ductile; easy and compliant; wavering. Phocion was a man of great severity, and no ways flexible to the will of the people. Bacon. Women are soft, mild, pitiful, and flexible. Shak.

Wavering; not steady; flickering. Bacon.

To waver unsteadily, like a flame in a current of air, or when about to expire; as, the flickering light. The shadows flicker to fro. Tennyson.

A fanciful stroke of the pen or graver; a merely decorative figure. The neat characters and flourishes of a Bible curiously printed. Boyle.

Moving like a wave; wavering; (Med.)

To move now in one direction and now in another; to be wavering or unsteady; to be irresolute or undetermined; to vacillate.

A wavering; unsteadiness; as, fluctuations of opinion; fluctuations of prices.

Repelling approach; repulsive; raising abhorrence, aversion, or dislike; disagreeable; prohibiting or interdicting; as, a forbidding aspect; a forbidding formality; a forbidding air.

To hinder; to fend off; to avert; to prevent the approach of; to forbid or prohibit. See Forfend. God forefend it should ever be recorded in our history. Landor. It would be a far better work . . . to forefend the cruelty. I. Taylor.

To prohibit; to forbid; to avert. [Archaic] Which peril heaven forefend! Shak.

d from ships of all nations at equal rates of duty. -- Free public house, in England, a tavern not belonging to a brewer, so that the landlord is free to brew his own beer or purchase where he chooses. Simmonds. -- Free school. (a) A school to which pupils are admitted without discrimination and on an equal footing.…

Pertaining to, or advocating, the non-extension of slavery; -- esp. applied to a party which was active during the period 1846-1856. [U.S.] -- Free"soil`er, n. [U.S.] -- Free"-soil`ism, n. [U.S.]

Anything strange, ugly or shocking, producing a feeling of alarm or aversion. [Colloq.]