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gs. Combing machine (Textile Manuf.), a machine for combing wool, flax, cotton, etc., and separating the longer and more valuable fiber from the shorter. See also Carding machine, under Carding.

To eat away by degrees; to wear away or diminish by gradually separating or destroying small particles of, as by action of a strong acid or a caustic alkali. Aqua fortis corroding copper . . . is wont to reduce it to a green- blue solution. Boyle.

To burst or open in chinks; to break, with or without quite separating into parts. By misfortune it cracked in the coling. Boyle. The mirror cracked from side to side. Tennyson.

The act or process of separating the finer parts of drugs from the coarser by sifting.

The act of separating from impurities, as lees or dregs; purification.

The operation of separating water from spirits and acids, by evaporation or repeated distillation; -- called also concentration, especially when acids are the subject of it. [Obs.]

The act of detaching or separating, or the state of being detached.

Having the quality of unloosing or separating. Clarke. Dialytic telescope, an achromatic telescope in which the colored dispersion produced by a single object lens of crown glass is corrected by a smaller concave lens, or combination of lenses, of high dispersive power, placed at a distance in the narrower part of the…

The muscular and tendinous partition separating the cavity of the chest from that of the abdomen; the midriff.

by a process different from conduction, as in the phenomena of induction; a nonconductor. separating a body electrified by induction, from the electrifying body.

Material which, in the process of catalysis, has diffused or passed through the separating membrane.

The act of pulling to pieces, or of separating the parts. Bp. Hall.

Tending to disjoin; separating; disjoining.

Tending to disperse. Dispersive power (Opt.), the relative effect of a material in separating the different rays of light by refraction, as when the substance is formed into a prism. -- Dis*pers"ive*ness, n.

Dividing or separating the parts of an animal or vegetable body; as, a dissecting aneurism, one which makes its way between or within the coats of an artery.

Fig.: The act of separating or dividing for the purpose of critical examination.

A separating tissue; a partition; a septum.

The act of dissolving, sundering, or separating into component parts; separation. Dissolutions of ancient amities. Shak.

separate into competent parts; to disorganize; to break up; hence, to bring to an end by separating the parts, sundering a relation, etc.; to terminate; to destroy; to deprive of force; as, to dissolve a partnership; to dissolve Parliament. Lest his ungoverned rage dissolve the life. Shak.

To vote, as in the British Parliament, by the members separating themselves into two parties (as on opposite sides of the hall or in opposite lobbies), that is, the ayes dividing from the noes. The emperors sat, voted, and divided with their equals. Gibbon.