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To possess and perform the duties of; to officiate in, as an incumbent; to occupy; to hold; as, a king fills a throne; the president fills the office of chief magistrate; the speaker of the House fills the chair.

Any plant, usually procumbent and mosslike, of the cryptogamous class Hepaticæ; -- called also scale moss and liverwort. See Hepaticæ, in the Supplement.

Spread over the surface of the ground; procumbent. Gray.

The rootstock or decumbent stem by which a hydroid is attached to other objects. See Illust. under Hydroidea.

The state of being incumbent; a lying or resting on something.

See Incumbent.

A horizontal member spanning an opening, and carrying the superincumbent weight by means of its strength in resisting crosswise fracture.

Having the radicle of the embryo lying against the back of one of the cotyledons; incumbent.

epresents a parish in its ecclesiastical and corporate capacities; hence, the rector or incumbent of a parochial church, who has full possession of all the rights thereof, with the cure of souls.

y a parish or ecclesiastical society, and appropriated to the maintenance or use of the incumbent or settled pastor.

s and solidity of a union. At present they formed a united phalanx. Macaulay. The sheep recumbent, and the sheep that grazed, All huddling into phalanx, stood and gazed. Cowper.

One of the incumbents of a benefice which has two or more rectors or vicars.

id formerly to the bishop or archdeacon, now to the ecclesiastical commissioners, by an incumbent, as a commutation for entertainment at the time of visitation; -- called also proxy. Procuration money (Law), money paid for procuring a loan. Blackstone.

n; to maintain; as, to prop a declining state. Shak. Till the bright mountains prop the incumbent sky. Pope. For being not propp'd by ancestry. Shak. I prop myself upon those few supports that are left me. Pope.

Trailing on the ground; procumbent.

To cause to spring up from recumbent position, from a state of quiet, or the like; to awaken; to arouse. They shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep. Job xiv. 12.

To cause or permit to lean, incline, rest, etc., to place in a recumbent position; as, to recline the head on the hand. The mother Reclined her dying head upon his breast. Dryden.

Recumbent. Reclining dial, a dial whose plane is inclined to the vertical line through its center. Davies & Peck (Math. Dict.).

The act of leaning, resting, or reclining; the state of being recumbent.

Of or pertaining to a king; royal. Regius professor, an incumbent of a professorship founded by royal bounty, as in an English university.