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Not easily excited to action or passion; cold; dull; sluggish; heavy; as, a phlegmatic person. Addison. Phlegmatic temperament (Old Physiol.), lymphatic temperament. See under Lymphatic.

A Highland air, suited to the particular passion which the musician would either excite or assuage; generally applied to those airs that are played on the bagpipe before the Highlanders when they go out to battle. Jamieson.

Evincing pity, compassion, or sympathy; compassionate; tender. "[She] piteous of his case." Pope. She was so charitable and so pitous. Chaucer.

Deserving pity; wworthy of, or exciting, compassion; miserable; lamentable; piteous; as, pitiable persons; a pitiable condition; pitiable wretchedness.

Full of pity; tender-hearted; compassionate; kind; merciful; sympathetic. The Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy. James v. 11.

ings or distresses of another or others; sympathy with the grief or misery of another; compassion; fellow- feeling; commiseration. He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the Lord. Prov. xix. 17. He . . . has no more pity in him than a dog. Shak.

Pure, passionless; nonsexual; philosophical. Platonic bodies, the five regular geometrical solids; namely, the tetrahedron, hexahedron or cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, and icosahedron. -- Platonic love, a pure, spiritual affection, subsisting between persons of opposite sex, unmixed with carnal desires, and regardin…

A composition, not in verse, of which the language is highly imaginative or impassioned; as, a prose poem; the poems of Ossian.

For poetry is the blossom and the fragrance of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions, emotions, language. Coleridge.

Public sentiment; general passion. [R.] A little time be allowed for the madness of popularity to cease. Bancroft.

nfluence; to control the will of; to fill; to affect; -- said especially of evil spirits, passions, etc. "Weakness possesseth me." Shak. Those which were possessed with devils. Matt. iv. 24. For ten inspired, ten thousand are possessed. Roscommon.

The state of being possessed or controlled, as by an evil spirit, or violent passions; madness; frenzy; as, demoniacal possession. How long hath this possession held the man Shak. To give possession, to put in another's power or occupancy. -- To put in possession. (a) To invest with ownership or occupancy; to provide…

Preceptive. [Obs.] [Passion] would give preceptial medicine to rage. Shak.

ithout just grounds, or before sufficient knowledge. Though often misled by prejudice and passion, he was emphatically an honest man. Macaulay.

votes. Denham. The conscience has power . . . to protest againts the exorbitancies of the passions. Shak.

To call forth; to call into being or action; esp., to incense to action, a faculty or passion, as love, hate, or ambition; hence, commonly, to incite, as a person, to action by a challenge, by taunts, or by defiance; to exasperate; to irritate; to offend intolerably; to cause to retaliate. Obey his voice, provoke him n…

The act that which, provokes; one who excites anger or other passion, or incites to action; as, a provoker of sedition. Drink, sir, is a great provoker of three things. Shak.

Having the power or quality of exciting resentment; tending to awaken passion or vexation; as, provoking words or treatment. -- Pro*vok"ing*ly, adv.

r combination; clean; mere; simple; unmixed; as, pure water; pure clay; pure air; pure compassion. The pure fetters on his shins great. Chaucer. A guinea is pure gold if it has in it no alloy. I. Watts.

est; desire; solicitation. Gad not abroad at every quest and call Of an untrained hope or passion. Herbert.