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The softer inorganic matter composing part of the surface of the globe, in distinction from the firm rock; soil of all kinds, including gravel, clay, loam, and the like; sometimes, soil favorable to the growth of plants; the visible surface of the globe; the ground; as, loose earth; rich earth. Give him a little earth…

Consisting of, or resembling, earth; terrene; earthlike; as, earthy matter. How pale she looks, And of an earthy cold! Shak. All over earthy, like a piece of earth. Tennyson.

Not straitened as to money matters; as, the market is easy; -- opposed to tight. Honors are easy (Card Playing), said when each side has an equal number of honors, in which case they are not counted as points.

a country; relating to political economy; as, economic purposes; economical truths. These matters economical and political. J. C. Shairp. There was no economical distress in England to prompt the enterprises of colonization. Palfrey. Economic questions, such as money, usury, taxes, lands, and the employment of the peop…

The management of domestic affairs; the regulation and government of household matters; especially as they concern expense or disbursement; as, a careful economy. Himself busy in charge of the household economies. Froude.

Serving to dissolve or attenuate viscid matter, and so to remove obstructions; deobstruent. -- n.

ication of; to revise and prepare for publication; to select, correct, arrange, etc., the matter of, for publication; as, to edit a newspaper. Philosophical treatises which have never been edited. Enfield.

duce against counter agency or influence; to extract; to evolve; as, to educe a form from matter. The eternal art educing good from ill. Pope. They want to educe and cultivate what is best and noblest in themselves. M. Arnold.

light crystallization, from a slow chemical change between some of the ingredients of the matter covered and an acid proceeding commonly from an external source; as, the walls of limestone caverns sometimes effloresce with nitrate of calcium in consequence of the action in consequence of nitric acid formed in the atmos…

Capable of being given off as an effluvium. "Effluviable matter." Boyle.

The act or process of flowing out, or issuing forth; effusion; outflow; as, the efflux of matter from an ulcer; the efflux of men's piety. It is then that the devout affections . . . are incessantly in efflux. I. Taylor.

To cast or throw out; to void, as excrement; to excrete, as the indigestible matter of the food; in an extended sense, to excrete by the lungs, skin, or kidneys.

Matter ejected; material thrown out; as, the ejecta of a volcano; the ejecta, or excreta, of the body.

al eel, and the electric cat. See Torpedo, and Gymnotus. -- Electric fluid, the supposed matter of electricity; lightning. -- Electrical image (Elec.), a collection of electrical points regarded as forming, by an analogy with optical phenomena, an image of certain other electrical points, and used in the solution of…

Lifeless matter deposited in the form of minute granules within the protoplasm of living cells.

One of the ultimate, undecomposable constituents of any kind of matter. Specifically: (Chem.) A substance which cannot be decomposed into different kinds of matter by any means at present employed; as, the elements of water are oxygen and hydrogen.

To obtain by separating, as from foreign matters; to deduce; as, to eliminate an idea or a conclusion. [Recent, and not well authorized]

he letter m, then a square type, used as a unit by which to measure the amount of printed matter on a page; the square of the body of a type.

To involve in difficulties concerning money matters; to incumber with debt; to beset with urgent claims or demands; -- said of a person or his affairs; as, a man or his business is embarrassed when he can not meet his pecuniary engagements.

To lay as in a bed; to lay in surrounding matter; to bed; as, to embed a thing in clay, mortar, or sand.