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Preceding; introductory; precursory. "A deep precursive sound." Coleridge.

indicates its approach; a forerunner; a harbinger. Evil thoughts are the invisible, airy precursors of all the storms and tempests of the soul. Buckminster.

The position or condition of a precursor. Ruskin.

Preceding as a precursor or harbinger; indicating something to follow; as, precursory symptoms of a fever.

Incurable. [Obs.] "Some unrecuring wound." Shak.

A group of intestinal worms, having the proboscis armed with recurved spines.

A regularly recurring stress upon the tone to mark the beginning, and, more feebly, the third part of the measure.

A forerunner; a precursor. [Obs.]

characterized by difficulty of breathing (due to a spasmodic contraction of the bronchi), recurring at intervals, accompanied with a wheezing sound, a sense of constriction in the chest, a cough, and expectoration.

The recurrence, or a tendency to a recurrence, of the original type of a species in the progeny of its varieties; resemblance to remote rather than to near ancestors; reversion to the original form.

A grallatorial bird, of the genus Recurvirostra; the scooper. The bill is long and bend upward toward the tip. The American species is R. Americana. [Written also avocette.]

es, sometimes domesticated; the Indian hog. Its upper canine teeth or tusks are large and recurved.

orm of French versification, sometimes imitated in English, in which three or four rhymes recur through three stanzas of eight or ten lines each, the stanzas concluding with a refrain, and the whole poem with an envoy.

he longer leg shows the pressure of the atmosphere. -- Wheel barometer, a barometer with recurved tube, and a float, from which a cord passes over a pulley and moves an index.

A recurring stroke; a throb; a pulsation; as, a beat of the heart; the beat of the pulse.

The day of the month in which a person was born, in whatever succeeding year it may recur; the anniversary of one's birth. This is my birthday; as this very day Was Cassius born. Shak.

A small, clear space in the segments of the ovum, the precursor of the nucleus.

The American avocet (Recurvirostra Americana).

An Australian percoid fish (Histiopterus recurvirostris), valued as a food fish.

blue lips, caused by undue cooling of the body or by nervous excitement, or forming the precursor of some constitutional disturbance, as of a fever.