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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…

The art of making discriminations between objects of choice, of discovering the whereabouts of hidden objects, etc., by inference from the involuntary movements of one whose hand the reader holds or with whom he is otherwise in muscular contact.

e workmanship, a nice application; exactly or fastidiously discriminated; requiring close discrimination; as, a nice point of law, a nice distinction in philosophy. The difference is too nice Where ends the virtue, or begins the vice. Pope.

Delicacy or exactness of perception; minuteness of observation or of discrimination; precision.

Discrimination. [Obs.] Sir J. Harrington.

epresented as bearing a cornucopia, and as blind, because his gifts were bestowed without discrimination of merit.

Distributed or applied without order or discrimination; not restricted to an individual; common; indiscriminate; as, promiscuous love or intercourse.

Of keen perception; quick to discern or distinguish; having nice discrimination; acute; penetrating; sagacious; clever; as, a sharp eye; sharp sight, hearing, or judgment. Nothing makes men sharper . . . than want. Addison. Many other things belong to the material world, wherein the sharpest philosophers have never yeL…

Discrimination; judgment; propriety; reason; cause. [Obs.] Shak. "As it was skill and right." Chaucer. For great skill is, he prove that he wrought. Chaucer. [For with good reason he should test what he created.]

Characterized by nicety of discrimination; discerning; delicate; refined; subtle. [In this sense now commonly written subtle.] The genius of the Spanish people is exquisitely subtile, without being at all acute; hence there is so much humor and so little wit in their literature. The genius of the Italians, on the contr…

Nice discernment with delicacy of mental action; nicety of discrimination.

Judgment; distinction; discrimination. Who would excel, when few can make a test Betwixt indifferent writing and the best Dryden.

ished from retail. By wholesale, in the mass; in large quantities; without distinction or discrimination. Some, from vanity or envy, despise a valuable book, and throw contempt upon it by wholesale. I. Watts.