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; grade; gradation; as, degrees of vice and virtue; to advance by slow degrees; degree of comparison.

To dishonor by a comparison with what is inferior; to lower in rank or estimation by actions or words; to speak slightingly of; to depreciate; to undervalue. Those forbidding appearances which sometimes disparage the actions of men sincerely pious. Bp. Atterbury. Thou durst not thus disparage glorious arms. Milton.…

Injurious comparison with an inferior; a depreciating or dishonoring opinion or insinuation; diminution of value; dishonor; indignity; reproach; disgrace; detraction; -- commonly with to. It ought to be no disparagement to a star that it is not the sun. South. Imitation is a disparagement and a degradation in a Christi…

Comparison or illustration by contraries.

A comparison by contrast; a dissimile.

remely admirable; apparently above what is human. In this application, the word admits of comparison; as, the divinest mind. Sir J. Davies. "The divine Desdemona." Shak. A divine sentence is in the lips of the king. Prov. xvi. 10. But not to one in this benighted age Is that diviner inspiration given. Gray.…

verage; to make such an allowance or correction in as will reduce to a common standard of comparison; to reduce to mean time or motion; as, to equate payments; to equate lines of railroad for grades or curves; equated distances. Palgrave gives both scrolle and scrowe and equates both to F[rench] rolle. Skeat (Etymol. D…

To from an opinion of, as to amount,, number, etc., from imperfect data, comparison, or experience; to make an estimate of; to calculate roughly; to rate; as, to estimate the cost of a trip, the number of feet in a piece of land.

The variation of words by declension, comparison, or conjugation; inflection.

der and a separatist. M. Arnold. The laws of philology have to be established by external comparison and induction. Earle.

elligible, or apprehensible; to elucidate, explain, or exemplify, as by means of figures, comparisons, and examples.

That which illustrates; a comparison or example intended to make clear or apprehensible, or to remove obscurity.

Lack of comparison, correspondence, or suitableness; incongruity. In this region of merely intellectual notion we are at once encountered by the imparity of the object and the faculty employed upon it. I. Taylor.

Not commensurable; having no common measure or standard of comparison; as, quantities are incommensurable when no third quantity can be found that is an aliquot part of both; the side and diagonal of a square are incommensurable with each other; the diameter and circumference of a circle are incommensurable. They are q…

Not comparable; admitting of no comparison with others; unapproachably eminent; without a peer or equal; matchless; peerless; transcendent. A merchant of incomparable wealth. Shak. A new hypothesis . . . which hath the incomparable Sir Isaac Newton for a patron. Bp. Warburton. -- In*com"pa*ra*ble*ness, n. -- In*com"pa…

The variation or change which words undergo to mark case, gender, number, comparison, tense, person, mood, voice, etc.

The act of judging; the operation of the mind, involving comparison and discrimination, by which a knowledge of the values and relations of thins, whether of moral qualities, intellectual concepts, logical propositions, or material facts, is obtained; as, by careful judgment he avoided the peril; by a series of wrong j…

science which treats of motions considered in themselves, or apart from their causes; the comparison and relation of motions.

Belonging to present times or those recent by comparison.

A comparison; parable; proverb. [Obs.] He said to them, Soothly ye shall say to me this likeness, Leech, heal thyself. Wyclif (Luke iv. 23).