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To meet in front; to oppose with firmness; to resist, or to meet for the purpose of stopping or opposing; to confront; to encounter; as, to face an enemy in the field of battale. I'll face This tempest, and deserve the name of king. Dryden.

The state of being fast and firm; firmness; fixedness; security; faithfulness. All . . . places of fastness [are] laid open. Sir J. Davies.

Weak in intellectual power; wanting firmness or constancy; irresolute; vacilating; imbecile. "comfort the feeble-minded." 1 Thess. v. 14. -- Fee"ble-mind"ed*ness, n.

Indicating firmness; as, a firm tread; a firm countenance.

Strength; firmness; stability. [Obs.] Chillingworth.

Fixed position; stable condition; firmness. [Obs.] Shak.

elding to the touch, and easily moved or shaken; hanging loose by its own weight; wanting firmness; flaccid; as, flabby flesh.

Yielding to pressure for want of firmness and stiffness; soft and weak; limber; lax; drooping; flabby; as, a flaccid muscle; flaccid flesh. Religious profession . . . has become flacced. I. Taylor. -- Flac"cid*ly, adv. -- Flac"cid*ness, n.

Power to resist attack; strength; firmness. [Obs.] The fortitude of the place is best known to you. Shak.

Firmness of mind; invincible spirit; unyielding courage; fortitude. C. Reade. E. P. Whipple.

Boldness, united with firmness and constancy of mind; bravery; intrepidity; also, audaciousness; impudence. A bound of graceful hardihood. Wordsworth. It is the society of numbers which gives hardihood to iniquity. Buckminster.

Hardihood; boldness; firmness; assurance. Spenser. Plenty and peace breeds cowards; Hardness ever Of hardiness is mother. Shak. They who were not yet grown to the hardiness of avowing the contempt of the king. Clarendon.

The act of implicating, or the state of being implicated. Three principal causes of firmness are. the grossness, the quiet contact, and the implication of component parts. Boyle.

Want of decision; want of settled purpose, or of firmness; indetermination; wavering of mind; irresolution; vacillation; hesitation. The term indecision . . . implies an idea very nicely different from irresolution; yet it has a tendency to produce it. Shenstone. Indecision . . . is the natural accomplice of violence.…

or not capable of being bent or changed; unyielding stiffness; inflexibleness; rigidity; firmness of will or purpose; unbending pertinacity; steadfastness; resoluteness; unchangeableness; obstinacy. The inflexibility of mechanism. A. Baxter. That grave inflexibility of soul. Churchill. The purity and inflexibility of…

The quality or state of being inflexible; inflexibility; rigidity; firmness.

The quality or condition of being unstable; want of stability, firmness, or steadiness; liability to give way or to fail; insecurity; precariousness; as, the instability of a building.

Firm establishment by long continuance; firmness or deep-rooted obstinacy of any quality or state acquired by time; as, the inveteracy of custom, habit, or disease; -- usually in a bad sense; as, the inveteracy of prejudice or of error. An inveteracy of evil habits that will prompt him to contract more. A. Tucker.…

Strength; power; firmness; inflexibility; as, to rule with a rod of iron. Bar iron. See Wrought iron (below). -- Bog iron, bog ore; limonite. See Bog ore, under Bog. -- Cast iron (Metal.), an impure variety of iron, containing from three to six percent of carbon, part of which is united with a part of the iron, as a…

To make loose; to free from tightness, tension, firmness, or fixedness; to make less dense or compact; as, to loosen a string, or a knot; to loosen a rock in the earth. After a year's rooting, then shaking doth the tree good by loosening of the earth. Bacon.