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uality or power of ready invention; quickness or acuteness in forming new combinations; ingeniousness; skill in devising or combining. All the means which human ingenuity has contrived. Blair.

Ingenious. [Obs.] Shak.

uous manner; openly; fairly; candidly; artlessly. Being required to explane himself, he ingeniously confessed. Ludlow.

institute an inquiry; to institute a suit. And haply institute A course of learning and ingenious studies. Shak.

ous scheme; an artful design or plot. Devilish machinations come to naught. Milton. His ingenious machinations had failed. Macaulay.

An invention; an ingenious device; a knickknack; as, Yankee notions. [Colloq.]

Sagacious in promoting a policy; ingenious in devising and advancing a system of management; devoted to a scheme or system rather than to a principle; hence, in a good sense, wise; prudent; sagacious; and in a bad sense, artful; unscrupulous; cunning; -- said of persons. Politic with my friend, smooth with mine enemy.…

mind. Berkeley. These verses, originally Greek, were put in Latin. Milton. All this is ingeniously and ably put. Hare.

n; reasonable; judicious. [R.] "Senseful speech." Spenser. "Men, otherwise senseful and ingenious." Norris.

To render more quick or acute in perception; to make more ready or ingenious. The air . . . sharpened his visual ray To objects distant far. Milton. He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Burke.

One who speculates, or forms theories; a speculator; a theorist. The very ingenious speculatist, Mr. Hume. V. Knox.

the sun of sovereignity to posterity. Eikon Basilike. Sun and planet wheels (Mach.), an ingenious contrivance for converting reciprocating motion, as that of the working beam of a steam engine, into rotatory motion. It consists of a toothed wheel (called the sun wheel), firmly secured to the shaft it is desired to driv…

A sly, dexterous, or ingenious procedure fitted to puzzle or amuse; as, a bear's tricks; a juggler's tricks.

sounds or letters, without regard to its meaning. Swamped near to drowning in a tide of ingenious vocables. Carlyle.

ng to Vulcan; made by Vulcan; hence, of or pertaining to works in iron or other metals. Ingenious allusions to the Vulcanian panoply which Achilles lent to his feebler friend. Macaulay.

ric conditions by the appearance or retirement of toy images. Peace to the artist whose ingenious thought Devised the weather house, that useful toy! Cowper. -- Weather molding, or Weather moulding (Arch.), a canopy or cornice over a door or a window, to throw off the rain. -- Weather of a windmill sail, the obliquity…

In a witty manner; wisely; ingeniously; artfully; with it; with a delicate turn or phrase, or with an ingenious association of ideas. Who his own harm so wittily contrives. Dryden.