Search the Dictionary

pose; to meet; to assemble. Locke. The Parliament of Scotland now convened. Sir R. Baker. Faint, underneath, the household fowls convene. Thomson.

or pertaining to a corona (in any of the senses). The coronal light during the eclipse is faint. Abney.

An exceedingly faint roundish or somewhat oblong nebulous light near the ecliptic and opposite the sun, best seen during September and October, when in the constellations Sagittarius and Pisces. Its cause is not yet understood. Called also Gegenschein.

ord, cheer up your spirits; our foes are nigh, and this soft courage makes your followers faint. Shak.

Cowardly; fainthearted; spiritless. "His craven heart." Shak. The poor craven bridegroom said never a word. Sir. W. Scott. In craven fear of the sarcasm of Dorset. Macualay.

critic as to damn them [the works of modern poets] . . . without hearing. Pope. Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering teach the rest to sneer. Pope.

Having a dull, faint heart; spiritless; listless. -- Dead"*heart`ed*ness, n. Bp. Hall.

e. There came a dearth over all the land of Egypt. Acts vii. 11. He with her press'd, she faint with dearth. Shak. Dearth of plot, and narrowness of imagination. Dryden.

A small wingless insect, of the family Psocidæ, which makes a similar but fainter sound; -- called also deathtick. She is always seeing apparitions and hearing deathwatches. Addison. I did not hear the dog howl, mother, or the deathwatch beat. Tennyson.

feebleness; languor. The inconveniences of too strong a perspiration, which are debility, faintness, and sometimes sudden death. Arbuthnot.

declined in worth; having lost in goodness; deteriorated; degraded; unworthy; base; low. Faint-hearted and degenerate king. Shak. A degenerate and degraded state. Milton. Degenerate from their ancient blood. Swift. These degenerate days. Pope. I had planted thee a noble vine . . . : how then art thou turned into the d…

eculative line of demarcation, where obedience ought to end and resistance must begin, is faint, obscure, and not easily definable. Burke.

To sink; to faint; to pine; to languish, with weakness, discouragement, love, etc. His heart died within, and he became as a stone. 1 Sam. xxv. 37. The young men acknowledged, in love letters, that they died for Rebecca. Tatler.

Having no disk; appearing as a point and not expanded into a disk, as the image of a faint star in a telescope.

ate; as, to dispel a cloud, vapors, cares, doubts, illusions. [Satan] gently raised their fainting courage, and dispelled their fears. Milton. I saw myself the lambent easy light Gild the brown horror, and dispel the night. Dryden.

Indistinct; faint; obscure, as from distance. Some distant knowledge. Shak. A distant glimpse. W. Irving.

To grow weak or faint with disappointment, grief, or like causes; to be dispirited or depressed; to languish; as, her spirits drooped. I'll animate the soldier's drooping courage. Addison.

The sunlight reflected from the earth to the moon, by which we see faintly, when the moon is near the sun (either before or after new moon), that part of the moon's disk unillumined by direct sunlight, or "the old moon in the arms of the new."

Liable to vanish or disappear; faint; weak; evanescent; as, evanid color. [Obs.] They are very transistory and evanid. Barrow.

To lose freshness, color, or brightness; to become faint in hue or tint; hence, to be wanting in color. "Flowers that never fade." Milton.