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n or want of ability; absence of competent physical, intellectual, or moral power, means, fitness, and the like. Grossest faults, or disabilities to perform what was covenanted. Milton. Chatham refused to see him, pleading his disability. Bancroft.

To be unsuited; to have unfitness; as, medicine sometimes disagrees with the patient; food often disagrees with the stomach or the taste.

To make unsuitable in quantity, form, or fitness to an end; to violate symmetry in; to mismatch; to join unfitly. To shape my legs of an unequal size; To disproportion me in every part. Shak. A degree of strength altogether disproportioned to the extent of its territory. Prescott.

Sharpness; readiness of fitness to cut; keenness; intenseness of desire. The full edge of our indignation. Sir W. Scott. Death and persecution lose all the ill that they can have, if we do not set an edge upon them by our fears and by our vices. Jer. Taylor.

e; to omit. Who never touched The excepted tree. Milton. Wherein (if we only except the unfitness of the judge) all other things concurred. Bp. Stillingfleet.

The state or quality of being exemplary; fitness to be an example.

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…

Not according with rule, fitness, or propriety; incorrect; rude; unpolished; inelegant. That 's an ill phrase. Shak. Ill at ease, uneasy; uncomfortable; anxious. "I am very ill at ease." Shak. -- Ill blood, enmity; resentment. -- Ill breeding, want of good breeding; rudeness. -- Ill fame, ill or bad repute; as, a ho…

or quality of being impertnent; absence of pertinence, or of adaptedness; irrelevance; unfitness.

The quality of being improper; unfitness or unsuitableness to character, time place, or circumstances; as, improperiety of behavior or manners.

The quality of being inapplicable; unfitness; inapplicableness.

Want of competency or legal fitness; incapacity; disqualification, as of a person to be heard as a witness, or to act as a juror, or of a judge to try a cause.

The quality or condition of being inconvenient; want of convenience; unfitness; unsuitableness; inexpediency; awkwardness; as, the inconvenience of the arrangement. They plead against the inconvenience, not the unlawfulness, . . . of ceremonies in burial. Hooker.

The quality of being inept; unfitness; inaptitude; unsuitableness. That ineptitude for society, which is frequently the fault of us scholars. Tatler.

Unfitness; ineptitude. The feebleness and miserable ineptness of infancy. Dr. H. More.

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.

Unsuitableness; unaptness; unfitness; inability. [Obs.] Barrow.

arthest of all from a given quality, character, or condition; most unlikely; having least fitness; as, he is the last person to be accused of theft.

Fitness; suitableness; propriety.

ted descendants, while those less perfectly adapted have tended to die out though lack of fitness for the environment, thus resulting in the survival of the fittest. See Darwinism. -- Natural system (Bot. & Zoöl.), a classification based upon real affinities, as shown in the structure of all parts of the organisms, an…