Search the Dictionary

To make pure and salubrious by destroying noxious matter; as, to sweeten rooms or apartments that have been infected; to sweeten the air.

A concretion in the joints of the bamboo, which consists largely or chiefly of pure silica. It is highly valued in the East Indies as a medicine for the cure of bilious vomitings, bloody flux, piles, and various other diseases.

Free from taint or infection; pure.

of magnesia. Steatite, or soapstone, is a compact granular variety. Indurated talc, an impure, slaty talc, with a nearly compact texture, and greater hardness than common talc; -- called also talc slate.

iment in wine casks, consisting essentially of crude cream of tartar, and used in marking pure cream of tartar, tartaric acid, potassium carbonate, black flux, etc., and, in dyeing, as a mordant for woolen goods; -- called also argol, wine stone, etc.

obtained from tartar as a white crystalline substance, C2H2(OH)2.(CO2H)2, having a strong pure acid taste. It is used in medicine, in dyeing, calico printing, photography, etc., and also as a substitute for lemon juice. Called also dextro-tartaric acid. (b) By extension, any one of the series of isomeric acids (racemic…

n of morphology created by Haeckel; the science of organic individuality constituting the purely structural portion of morphology, in which the organism is regarded as composed of organic individuals of different orders, each organ being considered an individual. See Promorphology, and Morphon.

A headpiece; a helmet. [Obs.] The shields bright, testers, and trappures. Chaucer.

Bred from the best blood through a long line; pure-blooded; -- said of stock, as horses. Hence, having the characteristics of such breeding; mettlesome; courageous; of elegant form, or the like. -- n.

An attack; an assault. One thrust at your pure, pretended mechanism. Dr. H. More.

vowels and diphthongs, being so called by Dr. James Rush (1833) " from their forming the purest and most plastic material of intonation."

A small bar of gold and silver, either pure, or alloyed in some known proportion with copper, for trying the purity of articles of gold or silver by comparison of the streaks made by the article and the bar on a touchstone.

R.] Souls purified by sorrow and self-denial, transhumanized to the divine abstraction of pure contemplation. Lowell.

erpret; hence, to explain or recapitulate in other words. Translating into his own clear, pure, and flowing language, what he found in books well known to the world, but too bulky or too dry for boys and girls. Macaulay.

Transparent; clear. [Poetic] "Fountain or fresh current . . . translucent, pure." Milton. Replenished from the cool, translucent springs. Pope.

Pure silica, like quartz, but crystallizing in hexagonal tables. It is found in trachyte and similar rocks.

Actual; not counterfeit, adulterated, or pretended; genuine; pure; real; as, true balsam; true love of country; a true Christian. The true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. John i. 9. True ease in writing comes from art, not chance. Pope.

An herbaceous composite plant (Eupatorium purpureum), often having hollow stems, and bearing purplish flowers in small corymbed heads.

To purify or refine, as metals; to melt out, and procure in a pure state, as oil, tallow, lard, etc. Shak. The words of the Lord are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Ps. xii. 6. For thou, O God, hast proved us: thou hast tried us, as silver is tried. Ps. lxvi. 10.…

of carpet made in Asia Minor and adjoining countries, having a deep pile and composed of pure wool with a weft of different material. It is distinguishable by its coloring and patterns from similar carpets made in India and elsewhere. -- Turkey oak. (Bot.) See Cerris. -- Turkey red. (a) A brilliant red imparted by m…