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Anything necessarily involved in, or answering to, another; the more apparent or conspicuous of two possible sides, or of two corresponding things. The fact that it [a belief] invariably exists being the obverse of the fact that there is no alternative belief. H. Spencer.

ed, seen, or understood; readily perceived by the eye or the intellect; plain; evident; apparent; as, an obvious meaning; an obvious remark. Apart and easy to be known they lie, Amidst the heap, and obvious to the eye. Pope.

philosophers, as to the intervention of the First Cause, by which they account for the apparent reciprocal action of the soul and the body.

An immense expanse; any vast space or quantity without apparent limits; as, the boundless ocean of eternity; an ocean of affairs. Locke.

Impervious to the rays of light; not transparent; as, an opaque substance.

oncealed or secret; not hidden or disguised; exposed to view or to knowledge; revealed; apparent; as, open schemes or plans; open shame or guilt. His thefts are too open. Shak. That I may find him, and with secret gaze Or open admiration him behold. Milton.

ts of the nature and properties of light, the laws of its modification by opaque and transparent bodies, and the phenomena of vision.

One of the azure transparent spheres conceived by the ancients to be inclosed one within another, and to carry the heavenly bodies in their revolutions.

The state of being orbate, or deprived of parents or children; privation, in general; bereavement. [Obs.] Bp. Hall.

A kind of transparent light muslin.

Mode of production, or bringing into being. This eruca is propagated by animal parents, to wit, butterflies, after the common origination of all caterpillars. Ray.

A child bereaved of both father and mother; sometimes, also, a child who has but one parent living. Orphans' court (Law), a court in some of the States of the Union, having jurisdiction over the estates and persons of orphans or other wards. Bouvier.

Shown; exhibited; declared; avowed; professed; apparent; -- often used as opposed to real or actual; as, an ostensible reason, motive, or aim. D. Ramsay.

In an ostensible manner; avowedly; professedly; apparently. Walsh. Ostensibly, we were intended to prevent filibustering into Texas, but really as a menace to Mexico. U. S. Grant.

Open to view; public; apparent; manifest. Overt and apparent virtues bring forth praise. Bacon.

A more or less spherical and transparent mass of granular protoplasm, which by a process of multiplication and growth develops into a mass of cells, constituting a new individual like the parent; an egg, spore, germ, or germ cell. See Illust. of Mycropyle.

A poisonous nitrogenous base (C6H10N2) obtained indirectly from oxamide as a thick transparent oil which has a strong narcotic odor, and a physiological action resembling that of atropine. It is probably related to pyridine.

render uneasy in mind; to disquiet; to distress; to grieve; as a child's faults pain his parents. I am pained at mJer. iv. 19. To pain one's self, to exert or trouble one's self; to take pains; to be solicitous. [Obs.] "She pained her to do all that she might." Chaucer.

The doctrine that all organisms must come from living parents; biogenesis; -- the opposite of Ant: spontaneous generation.

A babe or young child of Indian parentage in North America.