Search the Dictionary

The act of excogitating; a devising in the thoughts; invention; contrivance.

The power of bringing forth in abundance; fertility; richness of invention; as, the fecundity of God's creative power. Bentley.

itful; fruitfulness; productiveness; fecundity; richness; abundance of resources; fertile invention; quickness; readiness; as, the fertility of soil, or of imagination. "fertility of resource." E. Everett. And all her husbandry doth lie on heaps Corrupting in its own fertility. Shak. Thy very weeds are beautiful; thy w…

An invention; a fiction; something feigned or imagined. Social figments, feints, and formalism. Mrs. Browning. It carried rather an appearance of figment and invention . . . than of truth and reality. Woodward.

tinguished mental superiority; uncommon intellectual power; especially, superior power of invention or origination of any kind, or of forming new combinations; as, a man of genius. Genius of the highest kind implies an unusual intensity of the modifyng power. Coleridge.

running hand. Hence, a signature. I say she never did invent this letter; This is a man's invention and his hand. Shak. Some writs require a judge's hand. Burril.

condition; as, a heaven of delight. "A heaven of beauty." Shak. "The brightest heaven of invention." Shak. O bed! bed! delicious bed! That heaven upon earth to the weary head! Hood.

ptation; as, to humor the mind. It is my part to invent, and the musician's to humor that invention. Dryden.

Possessed of genius, or the faculty of invention; skillful or promp to invent; having an aptitude to contrive, or to form new combinations; as, an ingenious author, mechanic. A man . . . very wise and ingenious in feats of war. Hakluyt. Thou, king, send out For torturers ingenious. Shak. The more ingenious men are, the…

The quality 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.

To cover the same ground; to claim the same invention.

The act or state of interfering, or of claiming a right to the same invention. Interference figures (Optics), the figures observed when certain sections of crystallized bodies are viewed in converging polarized light; thus, a section of a uniaxial crystal, cut normal to the vertical axis, shows a series of concentric c…

Full of invention. J. Gifford.

A feigning to believe, as in the play of children; a mere pretense; a fiction; an invention. "Childlike make-believe." Tylor. To forswear self-delusion and make-believe. M. Arnold.

To oppose as equal; to contend successfully against. Eternal might To match with their inventions they presumed So easy, and of his thunder made a scorn. Milton.

machine. [The application for a patent] must be accompanied by a full description of the invention, with drawings and a model where the case admits of it. Am. Cyc. When we mean to build We first survey the plot, then draw the model. Shak.

That which produces conception, invention, or creation in the mind of the artist in undertaking his subject; the guiding or controlling idea manifested in a work of art, or any part of one.

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

ffirmed. "I have an oath in heaven" Shak. An oath of secrecy for the concealing of those [inventions] which we think fit to keep secret. Bacon.

carriage and harness work. -- Patent office, a government bureau for the examination of inventions and the granting of patents. -- Patent right. (a) The exclusive right to an invention, and the control of its manufacture. (b) (Law) The right, granted by the sovereign, of exclusive control of some business of manufac…