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ordinary with its ends cut off, borne sinister as a mark of bastardy, and containing one fourth in breadth of the bend sinister; -- called also bastard bar. See Bend sinister.

The fourth power, or the square of the square. Thus 4x4=16, the square of 4, and 16x16=256, the biquadrate of 4.

Of or pertaining to the biquadrate, or fourth power. Biquadratic equation (Alg.), an equation of the fourth degree, or an equation in some term of which the unknown quantity is raised to the fourth power. -- Biquadratic root of a number, the square root of the square root of that number. Thus the square root of 81 is…

Leap year; every fourth year, in which a day is added to the month of February on account of the excess of the tropical year (365 d. 5 h. 48 m. 46 s.) above 365 days. But one day added every four years is equivalent to six hours each year, which is 11 m. 14 s. more than the excess of the real year. Hence, it is necessa…

A molding, the convexity of which is one fourth of a circle, being a member just below the abacus in the Tuscan and Roman Doric capital; a torus; an ovolo.

) C after the clef is the mark of common time, in which each measure is a semibreve (four fourths or crotchets); for alla breve time it is written (c) The "C clef," a modification of the letter C, placed on any line of the staff, abows that line to be middle C.

The fourth of the twelve signs of the zodiac. The first point is the northern limit of the sun's course in summer; hence, the sign of the summer solstice. See Tropic.

A twenty-fourth part; -- a term used in estimating the proportionate fineness of gold.

Its head, which is in the Milky Way, is marked by a triangle formed by three stars of the fourth magnitude. See Cassiopeia.

An assessment equal to a fourth part of the revenue. [India] J. Mill.

dmiration, and who soon became what the journalists of our own time have been called -- a fourth estate of the realm. Macaulay.

he Lord's Supper; to commemorate the Declaration of Independence by the observance of the Fourth of July. We are called upon to commemorate a revolution. Atterbury.

The interval wanting to complete the octave; -- the fourth is the complement of the fifth, the sixth of the third.

so that the sum of the arrangement of four proportionals so that the sum of the third and fourth to the fourth.COMPOSITIVE Com*pos"i*tive, a. Etym: [L. compositivus.]

A curve, of the fourth degree, first made use of by the Greek geometer, Nicomedes, who invented it for the purpose of trisecting an angle and duplicating the cube.

rder of the scale, as ut and re. Johnson. Conjoint tetrachords (Mus.), two tetrachords or fourths, where the same note is the highest of one and the lowest of the other; -- also written conjunct.

A diminutive of the chevron, containing one fourth of its surface. Couple-closes are generally borne one on each side of a chevron, and the blazoning may then be either a chevron between two couple-closes or chevron cottised.

ics was, that nothing finer [than Goldsmith's "Traveler"] had appeared in verse since the fourth book of the "Dunciad." Macaulay.

A time note, with a stem, having one fourth the value of a semibreve, one half that of a minim, and twice that of a quaver; a quarter note.

The bone of the tarsus, which, in man and most mammals, supports the metatarsals of the fourth and fifth toes.