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A precedent; a decision of a court, an official declaration, or an opinion, saying, or statement worthy to be taken as a precedent.

A dignity or degree of honor next below a baron and above a knight, having precedency of all orders of knights except those of the Garter. It is the lowest degree of honor that is hereditary. The baronets are commoners.

An officer in a university, who precedes public processions of officers and students. [Eng.]

One who has a claim to precedence; a superior, as in merit, social standing, etc.; -- usually in the plural. Their betters would hardly be found. Hooker. For the better, in the way of improvement; so as to produce improvement. "If I have altered him anywhere for the better." Dryden.

ms of euchre and some other games, an extra card sometimes added to the pack, which takes precedence of all others as the highest card.

g., at Sydney, a cold and violent south or southwest wind, rising suddenly, and regularly preceded by a hot wind from the north; -- now usually called southerly buster. It blew across the Brickfields, formerly so called, a district of Sydney, and carried clouds of dust into the city.

Formed; shaped; constructed; made; -- often used in composition and preceded by the word denoting the form; as, frigate-built, clipper-built, etc. Like the generality of Genoese countrywomen, strongly built. Landor.

skull really belonged to the deposit in which it was found. If it did, it indicates an unprecedented antiquity for human beings of an advanced type.

Coolness; coldness; a chill. Death is the chillness that precedes the dawn. Longfellow.

o analysis. The investigation of difficult things by the method of analysis ought ever to precede the method of composition. Sir I. Newton. Composition cloth, a kind of clotch covered with a preparation making it waterproof. -- Composition deed, an agreement for composition between a debtor and several creditors. --…

dant circumstances in connection with the words employed. Abbott. Interpretation properly precedes construction, but it does not go beyond the written text. Parsons. Construction of an equation (Math.), the drawing of such lines and figures as will represent geometrically the quantities in the equation, and their relat…

The part or parts of something written or printed, as of Scripture, which precede or follow a text or quoted sentence, or are so intimately associated with it as to throw light upon its meaning. According to all the light that the contexts afford. Sharp.

A form assumed by Protozoa inwhich they become saclike and quiescent. It generally precedes the production of germs. See Encystment.

tain or arrive at as the result of reasoning; to gather, as a truth or opinion, from what precedes or from premises; to infer; -- with from or out of. O goddess, say, shall I deduce my rhymes From the dire nation in its early times Pope. Reasoning is nothing but the faculty of deducing unknown truths from principles al…

to hinder from possessing; to debar; to shut out from; -- with a remoter object, usually preceded by of. God hath deprived her of wisdom. Job xxxix. 17. It was seldom that anger deprived him of power over himself. Macaulay.

ive decree; to doom; to ordain or preordain; to appoint; -- often with the remoter object preceded by to or for. We are decreed, Reserved, and destined to eternal woe. Milton. Till the loathsome opposite Of all my heart had destined, did obtain. Tennyson. Not enjoyment and not sorrow Is our destined end or way. Longfel…

To fix the course of; to impel and direct; -- with a remoter object preceded by to; as, another's will determined me to this course.

ide. [Obs.] Chaucer. -- To do with, to dispose of; to make use of; to employ; -- usually preceded by what. "Men are many times brought to that extremity, that were it not for God they would not know what to do with themselves." Tillotson. -- To have to do with, to have concern, business or intercourse with; to deal w…

f Constantinople, or ecumenical patriarch (whose position is not one of supremacy, but of precedence), the patriarch of Alexandria, the patriarch of Jerusalem, the patriarch of Antioch, and the Holy Synod of Russia. The Eastern Church accepts the first seven ecumenical councils (and is hence styled only schismatic, not…

precedes two, or more, coördinate words or phrases, and is introductory to an alternative. It is correlative to or. Either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth. 1 Kings xviii. 27. Few writers hesitate to use either in what is called a triple alternative; such as, We must…