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Characterized by courteousness, affability, or gentleness; of good appearance and manners; graceful; complaisant. Was never prince so meek and debonair. Spenser.

A beginning or first attempt; hence, a first appearance before the public, as of an actor or public speaker.

A person who makes his (or her) first appearance before the public.

having power to mislead, or impress with false opinions; as, a deceptive countenance or appearance. Language altogether deceptive, and hiding the deeper reality from our eyes. Trench. Deceptive cadence (Mus.), a cadence on the subdominant, or in some foreign key, postponing the final close.

Cutting off; division; detachment of a part. [Obs.] Bp. Pearson.

A decrease. [Obs.] Pearson.

To destroy or mar the face or external appearance of; to disfigure; to injure, spoil, or mar, by effacing or obliterating important features or portions of; as, to deface a monument; to deface an edifice; to deface writing; to deface a note, deed, or bond; to deface a record. "This high face defaced." Emerson. So by fa…

, or failure to take, some step necessary to secure the benefit of law, as a failure to appear in court at a day assigned, especially of the defendant in a suit when called to make answer; also of jurors, witnesses, etc. In default of, in case of failure or lack of. Cooks could make artificial birds and fishes in defau…

One who makes default; one who fails to appear in court when court when called.

A burning up; conflagration. "Innumerable deluges and deflagrations." Bp. Pearson.

he act of humbling or abasing one's self. Adoration implies submission and dejection. Bp. Pearson.

xpunge; to dele; to omit. I have, therefore, . . . inserted eleven stanzas which do not appear in Sir Walter Scott's version, and have deleted eight. Aytoun.

The sudden disappearance of inflammation.

A light lance; a short spear; a half pike; also, a demilancer.

t. [Obs.] The latter I demur, for in their looks Much reason, and in their actions, oft appears. Milton.

a crystalline medium, such that the light which had been extinguished by the analyzer reappears as if the polarization had been anulled. The word is inappropriate, as the ray does not return to the unpolarized condition.

equation) in a lower degree. To depress the pole (Naut.), to cause the sidereal pole to appear lower or nearer the horizon, as by sailing toward the equator.

of unicellular algæ in which the species have a greenish color, and the cells generally appear as if they consisted of two coalescing halves.

To free from what is vulgar, common, or narrow. Shakespeare and Plutarch's "Lives" are very devulgarizing books. E. A. Abbott.

Resembling a dew-covered surface; appearing as if covered with dew.