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exercise in schools and colleges; as, the practice declamation by students. The public listened with little emotion, but with much civility, to five acts of monotonous declamation. Macaulay.

Want or absence of something necessary for completeness or perfection; deficiency; -- opposed to superfluity. Errors have been corrected, and defects supplied. Davies.

Wanting, to make up completeness; wanting, as regards a requirement; not sufficient; inadequate; defective; imperfect; incomplete; lacking; as, deficient parts; deficient estate; deficient strength; deficient in judgment. The style was indeed deficient in ease and variety. Macaulay. Deficient number. (Arith.) See under…

Definiteness. [R.] Definitude . . . is a knowledge of minute differences. Sir W. Hamilton.

A keeping out by force or wrong; a wrongful withholding, as of lands or tenements, to which another has a right.

t in lines, as with the pen, pencil, or graver; hence, to represent with accuracy and minuteness. See Delineation. Adventurous to delineate nature's form. Akenside.

A shortened form of Academia della Crusca, an academy in Florescence, Italy, founded in the 16th century, especially for conversing the purity of the Italian language.

Disorder; dissoluteness. [Obs.] Excess of rideordination. Jer. Taylor.

To hang down; to be sustained by being fastened or attached to something above. And ever-living lamps depend in rows. Pope.

Flattened; made level or even.

Profoundness; extent or degree of intensity; abundance; completeness; as, depth of knowledge, or color. Mindful of that heavenly love Which knows no end in depth or height. Keble.

To give up, the will, courage, or spirit; to be thoroughly disheartened; to lose all courage; to become dispirited or depressed; to take an unhopeful view. I should despair, or at least despond. Scott's Letters. Others depress their own minds, [and] despond at the first difficulty. Locke. We wish that . . . desponding…

Determinateness. [R.]

The quality of mind reaches definite conclusions; decision of character; resoluteness. He only is a well-made man who has a good determination. Emerson.

s, to develop theories; a motor that develops 100 horse power. These serve to develop its tenets. Milner. The 20th was spent in strengthening our position and developing the line of the enemy. The Century.

An old game or sport (revived under this name) consisting in whirling on a string, fastened to two sticks, a small somewhat spool- shaped object (called the diabolo) so as to balance it on a string, toss it in the air and catch it, etc.

frequent and profuse discharge of loose or fluid evacuations from the intestines, without tenesmus; a purging or looseness of the bowels; a flux.

The quality of being dilatory; lateness; slowness; tardiness; sluggishness.

The quality of being diminutive; smallness; littleness; minuteness.

The quality of being direct; straightness; straightforwardness; immediateness.