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A mean flatterer; a toadeater; a sycophant. Before I had been standing at the window five minutes, they somehow conveyed to me that they were all toadies and humbugs. Dickens.

sh, or tract of land; especially, the exact and scientific delineation and description in minute detail of any place or region.

, consisting of two upright pillars carrying one to three transverse lintels. It is often minutely carved with symbolic sculpture, and serves as a monumental approach to a Buddhist temple.

h tend to twist a body. -- Torsion balance (Physics.), an instrument for estimating very minute forces, as electric or magnetic attractions and repulsions, by the torsion of a very slender wire or fiber having at its lower extremity a horizontal bar or needle, upon which the forces act. -- Torsion scale, a scale for…

A hair on the surface of leaf or stem, or any modification of a hair, as a minute scale, or star, or gland. The sporangia of ferns are believed to be of the nature of trichomes. -- Tri*chom"a*tous, a.

A suborder of Neuroptera usually having the wings covered with minute hairs. It comprises the caddice flies, and is considered by some to be a distinct order.

To rub or grind to a very fine or impalpable powder; to pulverize and comminute thoroughly.

ne tropic or one equinox to the same again, having a mean length of 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 46.0 seconds, which is 20 minutes, 23.3 seconds shorter than the sidereal year, on account of the precession of the equinoxes.

t is most frequently found in the lungs, causing consumption. Tubercle bacillus (Med.), a minute vegetable organism (Bacillus tuberculosis) discovered by Koch, a German physician, in the sputum of consumptive patients and in tuberculous tissue, and believed to be the exciting cause of tubercles and tuberculosis.…

A minute tube lined with glandular epithelium; as, the uriniferous tubules of the kidney.

One of the peculiar minute chitinous hooks found in large numbers in the tori of tubicolous annelids belonging to the Uncinata.

Not circumstantial; not entering into minute particulars.

Resembling a utricle or bag, whether large or minute; -- said especially with reference to the condition of certain substances, as sulphur, selenium, etc., when condensed from the vaporous state and deposited upon cold bodies, in which case they assume the form of small globules filled with liquid.

too oft idle vacancies given both to schools and universities. Milton. No interim, not a minute's vacancy. Shak. Those little vacancies from toil are sweet. Dryden.

. . . at leisure, and vacant from the affairs of the world. Dr. H. More. There was not a minute of the day which he left vacant. Bp. Fell.

A genus of Infusoria which form minute vaselike or tubular cases in which they dwell.

Plants without true flowers, and reproduced by minute spores of various kinds, or by simple cell division. { 1. Acrogens. -- Plants usually with distinct stems and leaves, existing in two alternate conditions, one of which is nonsexual and sporophoric, the other sexual and oöphoric. Divided into Vascular Acrogens, or…

A literal adherent to, or a minute critic of, words; a literalist.

Minutely verrucose; as, a verruculose leaf or stalk.

One of the minute papillary processes on certain vascular membranes; a villosity; as, villi cover the lining of the small intestines of many animals and serve to increase the absorbing surface.