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The rate of ascent or descent; gradient; deviation from a level surface to an inclined plane; -- usually stated as so many feet per mile, or as one foot rise or fall in so many of horizontal distance; as, a heavy grade; a grade of twenty feet per mile, or of 1 in 264.

The rate of regular or graded ascent or descent in a road; grade.

Proceeding by steps or degrees; advancing, step by step, as in ascent or descent or from one state to another; regularly progressive; slow; as, a gradual increase of knowledge; a gradual decline. Creatures animate with gradual life Of growth, sense, reason, all summed up in man. Milton.

Standing in the second or some more remote degree of parentage or descent; -- generalIy used in composition; as, grandfather, grandson, grandchild, etc. What cause Mov'd our grand parents, in that happy state, Favor'd of Heaven so highly, to fall off From their Creator. Milton. Grand action, a pianoforte action, used i…

A son's or daughter's child; a child in the second degree of descent.

or mother's father; an ancestor in the next degree above the father or mother in lineal ascent. Grandfather longlegs. (Zoöl.) See Dady longlegs.

In droplike form. [Obs.] In its [hail's] guttulous descent from the air. Sir T. Browne.

An inhabitant or resident; -- a name applied to and denoting farmers of French descent or origin in Canada, especially in the Province of Quebec; -- usually in plural. The habitants or cultivators of the soil. Parkman.

The descent of a hill. [Obs.]

The shape of a half-moon; a crescent. See how in warlike muster they appear, In rhombs, and wedges, and half-moons, and wings. Milton.

Strong-scented; slightly tainted; as, epicures do not cook game before it is high.

Pubescent with coarse or stiff hairs. Gray.

Pubescent with minute and somewhat rigid hairs.

Covered with short, dense, grayish white hairs; canescent. Hoary bat (Zoöl.), an American bat (Atalapha cinerea), having the hair yellowish, or brown, tipped with white.

High flavor; strong scent. [Obs.] Halliwell.

; the Comforter; the Paraclete. -- Holy Grail. See Grail. -- Holy grass (Bot.), a sweet-scented grass (Hierochloa borealis and H. alpina). In the north of Europe it was formerly strewed before church doors on saints' days; whence the name. It is common in the northern and western parts of the United States. Called al…

Having a resemblance in structure, due to descent from a common progenitor with subsequent modification; homogenetic; -- applied both to animals and plants. See Homoplastic.

The correspondence of common descent; -- a term used to supersede homology by Lankester, who also used homoplasy to denote any superinduced correspondence of position and structure in parts embryonically distinct (other writers using the term homoplasmy). Thus, there is homogeny between the fore limb of a mammal and th…

ants or animals, in external shape, in general habit, or in organs, which is not due to descent from a common ancestor, but to similar surrounding circumstances.

One of the curved ends of a crescent; esp., an extremity or cusp of the moon when crescent-shaped. The moon Wears a wan circle round her blunted horns. Thomson.