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Constant or close application or attention, particularly to some business or enterprise; diligence. I have, with much pains and assiduity, qualified myself for a nomenclator. Addison.

Constant in application or attention; devoted; attentive; unremitting. She grows more assiduous in her attendance. Addison.

Three asterisks placed in this manner, *, to direct attention to a particular passage.

To direct the attention to; to fix the mind upon; to give heed to; to regard. [Obs.] The diligent pilot in a dangerous tempest doth not attend the unskillful words of the passenger. Sir P. Sidney.

Attention; regard; careful application. [Obs.] Till I come, give attendance to reading. 1 Tim. iv. 13.

Attention; heed. [Obs.] Spenser.

Heedful; intent; observant; regarding with care or attention.

To become thin, slender, or fine; to grow less; to lessen. The attention attenuates as its sphere contracts. Coleridge.

To draw by influence of a moral or emotional kind; to engage or fix, as the mind, attention, etc.; to invite or allure; as, to attract admirers. Attracted by thy beauty still to gaze. Milton.

The act of hearing; attention to sounds. Thou, therefore, give due audience, and attend. Milton.

Listening; paying attention; as, audient souls. Mrs. Browning.

Hypnotism of one's self by concentration of the attention on some object or idea.

act of awaking, or ceasing to sleep. Specifically: A revival of religion, or more general attention to religious matters than usual.

A man who escorts, or pays attentions to, a lady; an escort; a lover.

Flighty; passing rapidly from one subject to another; not having the faculty of attention. Bacon.

, expectation, or intense interest; attended with a holding of the breath; as, breathless attention. But breathless, as we grow when feeling most. Byron.

The raising or improving of any kind of domestic animals; as, farmers should pay attention to breeding.

That which busies one, or that which engages the time, attention, or labor of any one, as his principal concern or interest, whether for a longer or shorter time; constant employment; regular occupation; as, the business of life; business before pleasure. Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business Luke ii. 4…

of language, in prose or verse. Golden cadence of poesy. Shak. If in any composition much attention was paid to the flow of the rhythm, it was said (at least in the 14th and 15th centuries) to be "prosed in faire cadence." Dr. Guest.

A pile of stones heaped up as a landmark, or to arrest attention, as in surveying, or in leaving traces of an exploring party, etc. C. Kingsley. Kane.