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An assembly of persons wearing masks, and amusing themselves with dancing, conversation, or other diversions. In courtly balls and midnight masquerades. Pope.

diate agency or measure; necessary condition or coagent; instrument. Their virtuous conversation was a mean to work the conversion of the heathen to Christ. Hooker. You may be able, by this mean, to review your own scientific acquirements. Coleridge. Philosophical doubt is not an end, but a mean. Sir W. Hamilton.…

The period of natural cessation of menstruation. See Change of life, under Change.

Belonging to the table; transacted at table; as, mensa conversation.

rve the memory of anything; as, to take minutes of a contract; to take minutes of a conversation or debate.

A fixed compensation or equivalent given instead of payment of tithes in kind, expressed in full by the phrase modus decimandi. Blackstone. They, from time immemorial, had paid a modus, or composition. Landor. Modus operandi ( Etym: [L.], manner of operating.

One who soliloquizes; esp., one who monopolizes conversation in company. De Quincey.

The habit of soliloquizing, or of monopolizing conversation. It was not by an insolent usurpation that Coleridge persisted in monology through his whole life. De Quincey.

Dull; heavy; spiritless. "That he may not grow musty and unfit for conversation." Addison.

e doctrine of innate ideas, or that the mind possesses forms of thought independent of sensation.

action; the subjection of all phenomena, whether material or spiritual, to inevitable causation; necessitarianism. Of necessity, by necessary consequence; by compulsion, or irresistible power; perforce.

by a tremor, or by a nervous disease; weakened; overcome by some violent influence or sensation; shoked.

rvous system (Anat.), the specialized coördinating apparatus which endows animals with sensation and volition. In vertebrates it is often divided into three systems: the central, brain and spinal cord; the peripheral, cranial and spinal nerves; and the sympathetic. See Brain, Nerve, Spinal cord, under Spinal, and Sympa…

s Urtica, covered with minute sharp hairs containing a poison that produces a stinging sensation. Urtica gracitis is common in the Northern, and U. chamædryoides in the Southern, United States. the common European species, U. urens and U. dioica, are also found in the Eastern united States. U. pilulifera is the Roman n…

A sudden awkening associated with a sensation of terror, occurring in children, esp. those of unstable nervous constitution.

Enfeebled in, or destitute of, the power of sensation and motion; rendered torpid; benumbed; insensible; as, the fingers or limbs are numb with cold. "A stony image, cold and numb." Shak.

To offer in opposition as a criminal charge or by way of accusation or reproach; to adduce as an objection or adverse reason. He gave to him to object his heinous crime. Spencer. Others object the poverty of the nation. Addison. The book ... giveth liberty to object any crime against such as are to be ordered. Whitgift…

The act of forgetting, or the state of being forgotten; cessation of remembrance; forgetfulness. Second childishness and mere oblivion. Shak. Among our crimes oblivion may be set. Dryden The origin of our city will be buried in eternal oblivion. W. Irving.

of what is prescribed; adherence in practice; observance. [Obs.] We are to procure dispensation or leave to omit the observation of it in such circumstances. Jer. Taylor.

A pecuniary compensation for an injury, of eight times the value of the thing.