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To allege or adduce in proof, support, or vendication; to offer in excuse; as, the law of nations may be pleaded in favor of the rights of ambassadors. Spenser. I will neither plead my age nor sickness, in excuse of faults. Dryden.

Capable of being pleaded; capable of being alleged in proof, defense, or vindication; as, a right or privilege pleadable at law. Dryden.

ets the surface. -- Pole plate (Arch.), a horizontal timber resting on the tiebeams of a roof and receiving the ends of the rafters. It differs from the plate in not resting on the wall.

rming a sort of vestibule within the main wall, or projecting without and with a separate roof. Sometimes the porch is large enough to serve as a covered walk. See also Carriage porch, under Carriage, and Loggia. The graceless Helen in the porch I spied Of Vesta's temple. Dryden.

tion; a thesis; as, to define one's position; to appear in a false position. Let not the proof of any position depend on the positions that follow, but always on those which go before. I. Watts.

peremptory; indisputable; decisive; as, positive instructions; positive truth; positive proof. "'T is positive 'gainst all exceptions." Shak.

d stall (Coal Mining), a mode of working in which pillars of coal are left to support the roof of the mine.

A transverse commisure in the posterior part of the roof of the third ventricle of the brain; the posterior cerebral commisure. B. G. Wilder.

Something demanded or asserted; especially, a position or supposition assumed without proof, or one which is considered as self-evident; a truth to which assent may be demanded or challenged, without argument or evidence.

Assumed without proof; as, a postulated inference. Sir T. Browne.

Proof. [Obs.] Chaucer.

A proof for final revision.

To take or suppose to be true, or entitled to belief, without examination or proof, or on the strength of probability; to take for granted; to infer; to suppose. Every man is to be presumed innocent till he is proved to be guilty. Blackstone. What rests but that the mortal sentence pass, . . . Which he presumes already…

pon probable evidence; the act of assuming or taking for granted; belief upon incomplete proof.

on presumption or probability; grounded on probable evidence; probable; as, presumptive proof.

Proof. [Obs.] Chaucer.

To affect with sharp pain; to sting, as with remorse. "I was pricked with some reproof." Tennyson. Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart. Acts ii. 37.

Proof. [Obs.] Spenser. Lydgate.

is the appearance of the agreement or disagreement of two ideas, by the intervention of proofs whose connection is not constant, but appears for the most part to be so. Locke.

Proof; trial. [Obs.] Chaucer.