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ower, rank, or authority; also, a single clause in such a prayer. A house of prayer and petition for thy people. 1 Macc. vii. 37. This last petition heard of all her prayer. Dryden.

By way of begging the question; by an assumption. [R.] Sir T. Browne.

Supplicatory; making a petition. Pardon Rome, and any petitionary countrymen. Shak.

A person cited to answer, or defend against, a petition.

One who presents a petition.

The act of presenting apetition; a supplication.

One who seeks or asks; a seeker; an applicant. [R.] Fuller.

Petitioning; soliciting; supplicating. Sir W. Hamilton. Petitory suit or action (Admiralty Law), a suit in which the mere title to property is litigated and sought to be enforced, as distinguished from a possessory suit; also (Scots Law), a suit wherein the plaintiff claims something as due him by the defendant. Burril…

The toes or feet of a pig, -- often used as food; sometimes, in contempt, the human feet. Shak.

A manganesian kind of epidote, from Piedmont. See Epidote.

eness of ideas of language. To hammer one golden grain of wit into a sheet of infinite platitude. Motley.

One addicted to uttering platitudes, or stale and insipid truisms. "A political platitudinarian." G. Eliot.

To utter platitudes or truisms.

Abounding in platitudes; of the nature of platitudes; uttering platitudes. -- Plat`i*tu"di*nous*ness, n.

Deeply divided into several portions.

A sly or artful person. Whitgift. General practitioner. See under General, 2.

To constitute or establish beforehand.

Inflammation of the rectum.

, as from a parent; derived, as from an ancestor. [R.] The threefold distinction of profectitious, adventitious, and professional was ascertained. Gibbon.

being prompt; quickness of decision and action when occasion demands; alacrity; as, promptitude in obedience. Men of action, of promptitude, and of courage. I. Taylor.