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o knowledge and conceptions assumed, or presupposed, as prior to experience, in order to make experience rational or possible. A priori, that is, form these necessities of the mind or forms of thinking, which, though first revealed to us by experience, must yet have preëxisted in order to make experience possible. Cole…

Backward against the mast;-said of the sails when pressed by the wind. Totten. To be taken aback. (a) To be driven backward against the mast; -- said of the sails, also of the ship when the sails are thus driven. (b) To be suddenly checked, baffled, or discomfited. Dickens.

To give up absolutely; to forsake entirely ; to renounce utterly; to relinquish all connection with or concern on; to desert, as a person to whom one owes allegiance or fidelity; to quit; to surrender. Hope was overthrown, yet could not be abandoned. I. Taylor.

Forsaken, deserted. "Your abandoned streams." Thomson.

session of; to confuse or confound, as by exciting suddenly a consciousness of guilt, mistake, or inferiority; to put to shame; to disconcert; to discomfit. Abashed, the devil stood, And felt how awful goodness is. Milton. He was a man whom no check could abash. Macaulay.

aw), to enter into a freehold after the death of the last possessor, and before the heir takes possession. See Abatement, 4.

The amount abated; that which is taken away by way of reduction; deduction; decrease; a rebate or discount allowed.

To make briefer; to shorten; to abridge; to reduce by contraction or omission, especially of words written or spoken. It is one thing to abbreviate by contracting, another by cutting off. Bacon.

One of a college of seventy-two officers of the papal court whose duty is to make a short minute of a decision on a petition, or reply of the pope to a letter, and afterwards expand the minute into official form.

To take away surreptitiously by force; to carry away (a human being) wrongfully and usually by violence; to kidnap.

To take away by judicial decision. [R.]

ring; a renunciation upon oath; as, abjuration of the realm, a sworn banishment, an oath taken to leave the country and never to return.

To make able; to enable; to strengthen. Chaucer.

To do away with wholly; to annul; to make void; -- said of laws, customs, institutions, governments, etc.; as, to abolish slavery, to abolish folly.

] Aboon the pass of Bally-Brough. Sir W. Scott. The ceiling fair that rose aboon. J. R. Drake.

opposite tack; as, to face about; to turn one's self about. To bring about, to cause to take place; to accomplish. -- To come about, to occur; to take place. See under Come. -- To go about, To set about, to undertake; to arrange; to prepare. "Shall we set about some revels Shak. -- Round about, in every direction a…

One of a set of vagabonds who formerly roamed through England, feigning lunacy for the sake of obtaining alms. Nares. To sham Abraham, to feign sickness. Goldsmith.

To awake; to arouse; to stir or start up; also, to shout out. [Obs.] Chaucer.

To make shorter; to shorten in duration; to lessen; to diminish; to curtail; as, to abridge labor; to abridge power or rights. "The bridegroom . . . abridged his visit." Smollett. She retired herself to Sebaste, and abridged her train from state to necessity. Fuller.

That which abridges or cuts short; hence, an entertainment that makes the time pass quickly. [Obs.] What abridgment have you for this evening What mask What music Shak.