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A small mass around which other matter is concreted; a nucleus; a concretion or hard lump in the flesh.

A glandular organ which excretes urea and other waste products from the animal body; a urinary gland.

One who knows everything; hence, one who makes pretension to great knowledge; a wiseacre; -- usually ironical. [Colloq. or R.]

An interpreter. [Obs.] Coke.

Extent; size; amplitude; scope. I pretend not to treat of them in their full latitude. Locke.

Using, or interlarded with, pretentious words; bombastic; as, a lexiphanic writer or speaker; lexiphanic writing.

The use of pretentious words, language, or style.

One who adheres to the letter or exact word; an interpreter according to the letter.

A comprehensive name for all of the pretended arts which claim to produce effects by the assistance of supernatural beings, or departed spirits, or by a mastery of secret forces in nature attained by a study of occult science, including enchantment, conjuration, witchcraft, sorcery, necromancy, incantation, etc. An app…

isterial in opinions, nor, dictator-like, obtrude our notions on any man. Sir T. Browne. Pretenses go a great way with men that take fair words and magisterial looks for current payment. L'Estrange.

Belief in the coming of the Mahdi; fanatical devotion to the cause of the Mahdi or a pretender to that title. -- Mah"dist (#), n.

To alienate; to transfer; to make over. [Obs.] Waller. -- To make believe, to pretend; to feign; to simulate. -- To make bold, to take the liberty; to venture. -- To make the cards (Card Playing), to shuffle the pack. -- To make choice of, to take by way of preference; to choose. -- To make danger, to make experim…

A feigning to believe, as in the play of children; a mere pretense; a fiction; an invention. "Childlike make-believe." Tylor. To forswear self-delusion and make-believe. M. Arnold.

illness, in order to avoid doing his duty; hence, in general, one who shirks his duty by pretending illness or inability.

A kind of sweet wine from Crete, the Canary Islands, etc. Shak.

lass of Vertebrata. The young are nourished for a time by milk, or an analogous fluid, secreted by the mammary glands of the mother.

Addison . Frederick, in a public manifesto, appealed to the Empire against the insolent pretensions of the pope. Milman.

he house of the lord of a manor; a manor house; hence: Any house of considerable size or pretension.

y the machines of the gods. Pope. The marvelous, that which exceeds natural power, or is preternatural; that which is wonderful; -- opposed to the probable.

That which disguises; a pretext or subterfuge.