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on which one is constantly setting off; a favorite and ever-recurring theme of discourse, thought, or effort; that which occupies one's attention unduly, or to the weariness of others; a ruling passion. [Usually under the form hobby.] Not one of them has any hobbyhorse, to use the phrase of Sterne. Macaulay.…

Thoughtless; giddy; flighty; also, haughty; patronizing; as, to be in hoity-toity spirits, or to assume hoity-toity airs; used also as an exclamation, denoting surprise or disapprobation, with some degree of contempt. Hoity-toity! What have I to do with dreams Congreve.

godly; pious; irreproachable; guiltless; acceptable to God. Now through her round of holy thought The Church our annual steps has brought. Keble. Holy Alliance (Hist.), a league ostensibly for conserving religion, justice, and peace in Europe, but really for repressing popular tendencies toward constitutional governmen…

of obtaining it, or a belief that it is obtainable; an expectation of something which is thought to be desirable; confidence; pleasing expectancy. The hypocrite's hope shall perish. Job vii. 13. He wished, but not with hope. Milton. New thoughts of God, new hopes of Heaven. Keble.

Any natural projection or excrescence from an animal, resembling or thought to resemble a horn in substance or form; esp.:

r cry, as dogs and wolves often do. And dogs in corners set them down to howl. Drayton. Methought a legion of foul fiends Environ'd me about, and howled in my ears. Shak.

Humiliating; humbling. "Humiliant thoughts." [R.] Mrs. Browning.

ies. Also used figuratively. Like the smoke in a hurricane whirl'd. Tennyson. Each guilty thought to me is A dreadful hurricane. Massinger. Hurricane bird (Zoöl.), the frigate bird. -- Hurricane deck. (Naut.) See under Deck.

To impel to precipitate or thoughtless action; to urge to confused or irregular activity. And wild amazement hurries up and down The little number of your doubtful friends. Shak.

ve, as an exclamation; be still; be silent or quiet; make no noise. Hush, idle words, and thoughts of ill. Keble. But all these strangers' presence every one did hush. Spenser.

A median process on the furculum, or merrythought, of many birds, where it is connected with the sternum.

A figure by which the ordinary course of thought is inverted in expression, and the last put first; -- called also hysteron proteron.

f any object whatever, whether sensible or spiritual. Her sweet idea wandered through his thoughts. Fairfax. Being the right idea of your father Both in your form and nobleness of mind. Shak. This representation or likeness of the object being transmitted from thence [the senses] to the imagination, and lodged there fo…

Existing in idea or thought; conceptional; intellectual; mental; as, ideal knowledge.

nce supposed to correspond with an idea; the correlate in real existence to the idea as a thought or existence.

To apprehend in thought so as to fix and hold in the mind; to memorize. [R.]

the act of the mind by which objects of sense are apprehended and retained as objects of thought. The whole mass of residua which have been accumulated . . . all enter now into the process of ideation. J. D. Morell.

deas, rather than the result of distinct volitional efforts, as the act of expressing the thoughts in speech, or in writing, while the mind is occupied in the composition of the sentence. Carpenter.

y an idea. Ideograms may be defined to be pictures intended to represent either things or thoughts. I. Taylor (The Alphabet). You might even have a history without language written or spoken, by means of ideograms and gesture. J. Peile.

Of no account; useless; vain; trifling; unprofitable; thoughtless; silly; barren. "Deserts idle." Shak. Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. Matt. xii. 36. Down their idle weapons dropped. Milton. This idle story became important. Macaulay.