Search the Dictionary

To split into scales, especially to become converted into scales at the result of heat or decomposition.

To become joyous. [R.] Bacon.

To become widely opened, spread apart, dilated, distended, or enlarged; as, flowers expand in the spring; metals expand by heat; the heart expands with joy. Dryden.

ive country; to renounce the rights and liabilities of citizenship where one is born, and become a citizen of another country.

a mandate given by the pope or a prince appointing a successor to any benefice before it becomes vacant. Foxe.

re Their arms experience, and for sea prepare. Harte. To experience religion (Theol.), to become a convert to the diatribes of Christianity; to yield to the power of religions truth.

To come to an end; to cease; to terminate; to perish; to become extinct; as, the flame expired; his lease expires to-day; the month expired on Saturday.

To become suddenly expanded into a great volume of gas or vapor; to burst violently into flame; as gunpowder explodes.

make thin or slender; to draw out so as to lessen the thickness. His body behind the head becomes broad, from whence it is again extenuated all the way to the tail. Grew.

Without a survivor; without force; dead; as, a family becomes extinct; an extinct feud or law.

A canine tooth of the upper jaw. See Teeth. To cut one's eyeteeth, to become acute or knowing. [Colloq.]

To become fade; to grow weak; to lose strength; to decay; to perish gradually; to wither, as a plant. The earth mourneth and fadeth away. Is. xxiv. 4.

To become weary; to tire. Creighton withheld his force till the Italian began to fag. G. Mackenzie.

To be wanting; to fall short; to be or become deficient in any measure or degree up to total absence; to cease to be furnished in the usual or expected manner, or to be altogether cut off from supply; to be lacking; as, streams fail; crops fail. As the waters fail from the sea. Job xiv. 11. Till Lionel's issue fails, h…

To become weak or wanting in vigor; to grow feeble; to lose strength and color, and the control of the bodily or mental functions; to swoon; -- sometimes with away. See Fainting, n. Hearing the honor intended her, she fainted away. Guardian. If I send them away fasting . . . they will faint by the way. Mark viii. 8.…

To cease to be erect; to take suddenly a recumbent posture; to become prostrate; to drop; as, a child totters and falls; a tree falls; a worshiper falls on his knees. I fell at his feet to worship him. Rev. xix. 10.

To cause to become a fanatic.

To grow or form feathers; to become feathered; -- often with out; as, the birds are feathering out.

n between two parties for the purpose of trying before a jury a question of fact which it becomes necessary to settle in the progress of a cause. Burill. Bouvier.

To generate pus; to become imflamed and suppurate; as, a sore or a wound festers. Wounds immedicable Rankle, and fester, and gangrene. Milton. Unkindness may give a wound that shall bleed and smart, but it is treachery that makes it fester. South. Hatred . . . festered in the hearts of the children of the soil. Macaula…