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The quality of being expedient or advantageous; fitness or suitableness to effect a purpose intended; adaptedness to self- interest; desirableness; advantage; advisability; -- sometimes contradistinguished from moral rectitude. Divine wisdom discovers no expediency in vice. Cogan. To determine concerning the expedience…

An expedient. [Obs.] A like expediment to remove discontent. Barrow.

Ready; quick; expert; as, he is facile in expedients; he wields a facile pen. -- Fac"ile-ly, adv. -- Fac"ile*ness, n.

a supporting body of troops). (b) To have recourse to (a reserved fund, or some available expedient or support). -- To fall calm, to cease to blow; to become calm. -- To fall down. (a) To prostrate one's self in worship. "All kings shall fall down before him." Ps. lxxii. 11. (b) To sink; to come to the ground. "Down…

of silica, or flints, in potash. -- To skin a flint, to be capable of, or guilty of, any expedient or any meanness for making money. [Colloq.]

he city. Shak. -- To think good, to approve; to be pleased or satisfied with; to consider expedient or proper. If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. Zech. xi. 12.

uck, or fortune; lucky; fortunate; successful; prosperous; satisfying desire; as, a happy expedient; a happy effort; a happy venture; a happy omen. Chymists have been more happy in finding experiments than the causes of them. Boyle.

Not politic; contrary to, or wanting in, policy; unwise; imprudent; indiscreet; inexpedient; as, an impolitic ruler, law, or measure. The most unjust and impolitic of all things, unequal taxation. Burke.

Not becoming or suitable; unfit; inexpedient.

nefficient; weak; useless; futile; unavailing; as, an ineffectual attempt; an ineffectual expedient. Pope. The peony root has been much commended, . . . and yet has been by many found ineffectual. Boyle.

The quality or state of being inexpedient; want of fitness; unsuitableness to the end or object; impropriety; as, the inexpedience of some measures. It is not the rigor but the inexpediency of laws and acts of authority which makes them tyrannical. Paley.

Able and apt to invent; quick at contrivance; ready at expedients; as, an inventive head or genius. Dryden. -- In*vent"ive*ly, adv. -- In*vent"ive*ness, n.

candlelight; nocturnal study; meditation. After long lucubration I have hit upon such an expedient. Goldsmith.

e the quantity of sail already extended. (b) To set sail. -- To make shift, to manage by expedients; as, they made shift to do without it. [Colloq.]. -- To make sternway, to move with the stern foremost; to go or drift backward. -- To make strange, to act in an unfriendly manner or as if surprised; to treat as stran…

That with which one makes shift; a temporary expedient. James Mill. I am not a model clergyman, only a decent makeshift. G. Eliot.

To be necessary, fit, becoming, or expedient; to behoove; -- in this sense formerly sometimes used impersonally or without a subject expressed. "Well ought us work." Chaucer. To speak of this as it ought, would ask a volume. Milton. Ought not Christ to have suffered these things Luke xxiv. 26.

To agitate or discuss beyond what is expedient. Bp. Hall.

m of a required pressure. -- To raise the wind, to procure ready money by some temporary expedient. [Colloq.] -- To raise Cain, or To raise the devil, to cause a great disturbance; to make great trouble. [Slang]

xpert; as, a ready apprehension; ready wit; a ready writer or workman. "Ready in devising expedients." Macaulay. Gurth, whose temper was ready, through surly. Sir W. Scott.

An expedient to secure protection or defense; a device or contrivance. Their latest refuge Was to send him. Shak. Light must be supplied, among gracefulrefuges, by terracing Sir H. Wotton. Cities of refuge (Jewish Antiq.), certain cities appointed as places of safe refuge for persons who had committed homicide without…