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Drudging; servile. [Colloq.] Bred to some poking profession. Gray.

Base; vile; contemptible; cowardly.

lished for the legal entry of merchandise. -- Port toll (Law), a payment made for the privilege of bringing goods into port. -- Port warden, the officer in charge of a port; a harbor master.

The return to his own country, and his former privileges, of a person who had gone to sojourn in a foreign country, or had been banished, or taken by an enemy. Burrill.

d by courtesy; liable to be changed or lost at the pleasure of another; as, precarious privileges. Addison.

The privilege or prerogative formerly enjoyed by the king of buying provisions for his household in preference to others. [Eng.]

scholarship, for discoveries, etc. To think it not the necessity, but the premium and privilege of life, to eat and sleep without any regard to glory. Burke. The law that obliges parishes to support the poor offers a premium for the encouragement of idleness. Franklin.

The act of prenominating; privilege of being named first. Sir T. Browne.

An exclusive or peculiar privilege; prior and indefeasible right; fundamental and essential possession; -- used generally of an official and hereditary right which may be asserted without question, and for the exercise of which there is no responsibility or accountability as to the fact and the manner of its exercise.…

Endowed with a prerogative, or exclusive privilege. [R.] Shak.

e; a preternatural stillness; a preternatural presentation (in childbirth) or labor. This vile and preternatural temper of mind. South.

To intercept; to hinder; to frustrate; to stop; to thwart. "This vile purpose to prevent." Shak. Perhaps forestalling night prevented them. Milton.

The state or privileges of the firstborn. Burke.

copal Church of Scotland, who presides at the meetings of the bishops, and has certain privileges but no metropolitan authority. Internat. Cyc.

Of or pertaining to the proletaries; belonging to the commonalty; hence, mean; vile; vulgar. "Every citizen, if he were not a proletarian animal kept at the public cost." De Quincey. -- n.

One who prostitutes; one who submits himself, of or offers another, to vile purposes. Bp. Hurd.

A privilege which one party buys of another to "put" (deliver) to him a certain amount of stock, grain, etc., at a certain price and date. [Brokers' Cant] A put and a call may be combined in one instrument, the holder of which may either buy or sell as he chooses at the fixed price. Johnson's Cyc.

other accomplishment necessary for a purpose; to make capable, as of an employment or privilege; to supply with legal power or capacity. He had qualified himself for municipal office by taking the oaths to the sovereigns in possession. Macaulay.

The period of forty days during which the widow had the privilege of remaining in the mansion house of which her husband died seized. Quarantine flag, a yellow flag hoisted at the fore of a vessel or hung from a building, to give warning of an infectious disease; -- called also the yellow jack, and yellow flag.…

One who quibbles; a caviler; also, a punster.