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The act of softening by mixing with a thinner substance; the formation of ingredients into a mass for pills or plasters. [R.]

One who, or that which, malaxates; esp., a machine for grinding, kneading, or stirring into a pasty or doughy mass. [R.]

One of the huge multinucleated cells found in the marrow of bone and occasionally in other parts; a giant cell. See Osteoclast.

as seen from some other conventional point, as the earth's center or the sun. Annual parallax, the greatest value of the heliocentric parallax, or the greatest annual apparent change of place of a body as seen from the earth and sun; as, the annual parallax of a fixed star. -- Binocular parallax, the apparent differen…

A poleax. [Obs.] Chaucer.

The art of preserving from, or of preventing, disease; the observance of the rules necessary for the preservation of health; preservative or preventive treatment.

To make lax or loose; to make less close, firm, rigid, tense, or the like; to slacken; to loosen; to open; as, to relax a rope or cord; to relax the muscles or sinews. Horror . . . all his joints relaxed. Milton. Nor served it to relax their serried files. Milton.

Capable of being relaxed.

A medicine that relaxes; a laxative.

The act or process of relaxing, or the state of being relaxed; as, relaxation of the muscles; relaxation of a law.

Having the quality of relaxing; laxative. -- n.

A genus of perennial climbing plants, usually with a prickly woody stem; green brier, or cat brier. The rootstocks of certain species are the source of the medicine called sarsaparilla.

The parallax of the sun, that is, the angle subtended at the sun by the semidiameter of the earth. It is 8."80, and is the fundamental datum.

Having the outer and middle toes partially united; -- said of certain birds related to the creepers.

aving narrow leaves and showy orange and yellow flowers; -- called also butter and eggs, flaxweed, and ramsted.

Earth flax, or mountain flax; a soft silky variety of asbestus.

Gently opening the bowels; laxative. -- n.

To bind up; to confine; to constrict; to contract. The solid parts were to be relaxed or astricted. Arbuthnot.

Drawing together the tissues; binding; contracting; -- opposed to laxative; as, astringent medicines; a butter and astringent taste; astringent fruit.

Flaxen-colored. [Obs.] Florio.