Search the Dictionary

Depurating; tending to depurate or cleanse; depurative.

Serving to purge; tending to cleanse or purify. [Obs.] Cotgrave.

Tending to derogate, or lessen in value; expressing derogation; detracting; injurious; -- with from to, or unto. Acts of Parliament derogatory from the power of subsequent Parliaments bind not. Blackstone. His language was severely censured by some of his brother peers as derogatory to their other. Macaulay. Derogatory…

Descending; falling; proceeding from an ancestor or source. More than mortal grace Speaks thee descendent of ethereal race. Pope.

Tending to descend; tending downwards; descending. Smart.

The act of descending, or passing downward; change of place from higher to lower.

Tending to describe; having the quality of representing; containing description; as, a descriptive figure; a descriptive phrase; a descriptive narration; a story descriptive of the age. Descriptive anatomy, that part of anatomy which treats of the forms and relations of parts, but not of their textures. -- Descriptive…

Drying; tending to dry. Ferrand. -- n. (Med.)

Termination; ending. Bp. Hall.

Ending; forming an end; lowermost. [Obs.] "Their desinent parts, fish." B. Jonson.

Final; conclusive; ending. [R.]

An end or ending. [R.]

Causing destruction; tending to bring about ruin, death, or devastation; ruinous; fatal; productive of serious evil; mischievous; pernicious; -- often with of or to; as, intemperance is destructive of health; evil examples are destructive to the morals of youth. Time's destructive power. Wordsworth. Destructive distill…

To cleanse; to purge away, as foul or offending matter from the body, or from an ulcer.

The state of decision; a judicial decision, or ending of controversy.

Tending to detractor draw. [R.]

Bending down; sloping. [Obs.]

A bending downward; a sloping; incurvation downward; declivity. [R.] Davies (Wit's Pilgr.)

Tending to deviate; devious; as, deviatory motion. [R.] Tully.

Turning from the left to the right, in the ascending line, as in the spiral inclination of the stem of the common morning-glóry.