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Secreting; performing, or connected with, the office secretion; secernent; as, secretory vessels, nerves. -- n.

Exciting secretion; -- said of the influence exerted by reflex action on the function of secretion, by which the various glands are excited to action.

Morbid or excessive secretion, as in catarrh.

A secretary who is subordinate to the chief secretary; an assistant secretary; as, an undersecretary of the Treasury.

Not secret; not close; not trusty; indiscreet. [Obs.] "We are unsecret to ourselves." Shak.

To depart clandestinely; to steal off and secrete one's self; -- used especially of persons who withdraw to avoid a legal process; as, an absconding debtor. That very homesickness which, in regular armies, drives so many recruits to abscond. Macaulay.

Fugitive concealment; secret retirement; hiding. [R.] Phillips.

To take secretly or dishonestly; to purloin; as, to abstract goods from a parcel, or money from a till. Von Rosen had quietly abstracted the bearing-reins from the harness. W. Black.

Causing heat and irritation; corrosive; as, acrid secretions.

Failure of the due secretion of milk after childbirth.

ance; apparent character; semblance; manner; style. It was communicated with the air of a secret. Pope.

, found floating in the Indian Ocean and other parts of the tropics, and also as a morbid secretion in the intestines of the sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus), which is believed to be in all cases its true origin. In color it is white, ash-gray, yellow, or black, and often variegated like marble. The floating masses…

A secret organization in the United States, formed in Iowa in 1887, ostensibly for the protection of American institutions by keeping Roman Catholics out of public office. Abbrev. commonly to A. P .A.

One of a series of substances formed, in secreting cells, by constructive or anabolic processes, in the production of protoplasm; -- opposed to katastate. Foster.

ious kinds of plant lice or aphids tended by ants for the sake of the honeydew which they secrete. See Aphips.

Causing a diminution or a suppression of the secretion of milk.

Nonsecretion or defective secretion of urine; ischury.

ut of an indefinite number of persons; anyone; any person. His Majesty could not keep any secret from anybody. Macaulay.

ions to; to examine; to try. [Obs.] See Pose. To appose him without any accuser, and that secretly. Tyndale.

olving gold, the "royal" metal. -- Aqua Tofana, a fluid containing arsenic, and used for secret poisoning, made by an Italian woman named Tofana, in the middle of the 17th century, who is said to have poisoned more than 600 persons. Francis. -- Aqua vitæ Etym: [L., water of life. Cf. Eau de vie, Usquebaugh], a name g…