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In the duodecimal system of mensuration, the twelfth part of an inch or prime; a line. See Inch, and Prime, n., 8.

Suceeding next in order to the first; of second place, origin, rank, rank, etc.; not primary; subordinate; not of the first order or rate. Wheresoever there is normal right on the one hand, no secondary right can discharge it. L'Estrange. Two are the radical differences; the secondary differences are as four. Bacon.…

Not original or primary; received from another. They have but a secondhand or implicit knowledge. Locke.

or holy; relating to temporal as distinguished from eternal interests; not immediately or primarily respecting the soul, but the body; worldly. New foes arise, Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains. Milton.

The second coat, or integument, of an ovule, lying within the primine.

Of or pertaining to the segmental organs. Segmental duct (Anat.), the primitive duct of the embryonic excretory organs which gives rise to the Wolffian duct and ureter; the pronephric duct. -- Segmental organs. (a) (Anat.) The embryonic excretory organs of vertebrates, consisting primarily of the segmental tubes and s…

lding the first place in a series of developed results or consequents; germinal; radical; primary; original; as, seminal principles of generation; seminal virtue. The idea of God is, beyond all question or comparison, the one great seminal principle. Hare. Seminal leaf (Bot.), a seed leaf, or cotyleden. -- Seminal rec…

Studiously neat or nice, especially in dress; spruce; affectedly precise; smooth and prim. They be so smug and smooth. Robynson (More's Utopia). The smug and scanty draperies of his style. De Quincey. A young, smug, handsome holiness has no fellow. Beau & Fl.

soda water. Called also cooking soda, saleratus, and technically, acid sodium carbonate, primary sodium carbonate, sodium dicarbonate, etc. -- Sodium carbonate, a white crystalline substance, Na2CO3.10H2O, having a cooling alkaline taste, found in the ashes of many plants, and produced artifically in large quantities…

A plant of the genus Soldanella, low Alpine herbs of the Primrose family.

o openness or hollowness; strength; soundness, -- opposed to weakness or instability; the primary quality or affection of matter by which its particles exclude or resist all others; hardness; massiveness. That which hinders the approach of two bodies when they are moving one toward another, I call solidity. Locke.…

A cavity in the primary nectocalyx of certain Siphonophora. See Illust. under Nectocalyx.

An adjective suffix having primarily the sense of like or same, and indicating a considerable degree of the thing or quality denoted in the first part of the compound; as in mettlesome, full of mettle or spirit; gladsome, full of gladness; winsome, blithesome, etc.

of a drug; the specific distinction between virtue and vice. Specific difference is that primary attribute which distinguishes each species from one another. I. Watts.

A primitive seminal cell, occuring in masses in the seminal tubules. It divides into a mass (spermosphere) of small cells (spermoblast), which in turn give rise to spermatozoids.

An electric dynamometer having two coils so arranged that one carries the primary current, and the other the secondary current, of a transformer.

Not legitimate; bastard; as, spurious issue. "Her spurious firstborn." Milton. Spurious primary, or Spurious quill (Zoöl.), the first, or outer, primary quill when rudimentary or much reduced in size, as in certain singing birds. -- Spurious wing (Zoöl.), the bastard wing, or alula.

Primarily, a square; hence, a square body of troops; a body of troops drawn up in a square. [R.] Those half-rounding quards Just met, and, closing, stood in squadron joined. Milton.

One of the upright pieces in a frame; one of the primary members of a frame, into which the secondary members are mortised.

After that; after what is stated. In the primitive church, such as by fear being compelled to sacrifice to strange gods, after repented, and kept still the office of preaching the gospel. Whitgift. Still and anon, at intervals and repeatedly; continually; ever and anon; now and then. And like the watchful minutes to th…