Search the Dictionary

words or behavior; propriety of form in social intercourse, in actions, or in discourse; proper formality; becoming ceremony; seemliness; hence, freedom from obscenity or indecorum; modesty. Observances of time, place, and of decency in general. Burke. Immodest words admit of no defense, For want of decency is want of…

Suitable in words, behavior, dress, or ceremony; becoming; fit; decorous; proper; seemly; as, decent conduct; decent language. Shak. Before his decent steps. Milton.

f rights, under Bill. -- Declaration of trust (Law), a paper subscribed by a grantee of property, acknowledging that he holds it in trust for the purposes and upon the terms set forth. Abbott.

able to a character, or to the time, place, and occasion; marked with decorum; becoming; proper; seemly; befitting; as, a decorous speech; decorous behavior; a decorous dress for a judge. A decorous pretext the war. Motley. -- De*co"rous*ly, adv. -- De*co"rous*ness, n.

y decree or law; to determine; to order; to ordain; as, a court decrees a restoration of property. Thou shalt also decree a thing, and it shall be established unto thee. Job xxii. 28.

le of being deduced or inferred; derivable by reasoning, as a result or consequence. All properties of a triangle depend on, and are deducible from, the complex idea of three lines including a space. Locke.

An undoing or annulling; destruction. [Obs.] Upon whose property and most dear life A damned defeat was made. Shak.

Serving to defend or protect; proper for defense; opposed to offensive; as, defensive armor. A moat defensive to a house. Shak.

Act of ascertaining and explaining the signification; a description of a thing by its properties; an explanation of the meaning of a word or term; as, the definition of "circle;" the definition of "wit;" an exact definition; a loose definition. Definition being nothing but making another understand by words what the te…

To turn aside; to deviate from a right or a horizontal line, or from a proper position, course or direction; to swerve. At some part of the Azores, the needle deflecteth not, but lieth in the true meridian. Sir T. Browne. To deflect from the line of truth and reason. Warburton.

The act of turning aside, or state of being turned aside; a turning from a right line or proper course; a bending, esp. downward; deviation. The other leads to the same point, through certain deflections. Lowth.

The state of being deformed; want of proper form or symmetry; any unnatural form or shape; distortion; irregularity of shape or features; ugliness. To make an envious mountain on my back, Where sits deformity to mock my body. Shak.

To deprive of some right, interest, or property, by a deceitful device; to withhold from wrongfully; to injure by embezzlement; to cheat; to overreach; as, to defraud a servant, or a creditor, or the state; -- with of before the thing taken or withheld. We have defrauded no man. 2 Cor. vii. 2. Churches seem injured and…

To deprive of magnetic properties. See Magnetize. If the bar be rapidly magnetized and demagnetized. A. Cyc.

Having power to denote; designating or marking off. Proper names are preëminently denotative; telling us that such as object has such a term to denote it, but telling us nothing as to any single attribute. Latham.

To put out of place, order, or rank; to disturb the proper arrangement or order of; to throw into disorder, confusion, or embarrassment; to disorder; to disarrange; as, to derange the plans of a commander, or the affairs of a nation.

A thing voluntary abandoned or willfully cast away by its proper owner, especially a ship abandoned at sea.

e; mischief; harm; diminution; loss; damage; -- used very generically; as, detriments to property, religion, morals, etc. I can repair That detriment, if such it be. Milton.

A prefix which formerly properly indicated the second in a regular series of compound in the series, and not to its composition, but which is now generally employed in the same sense as bi- or di-, although little used.

Improperly, an heraldic bearing. Knights-errant used to distinguish themselves by devices on their shields. Addison. A banner with this strange device -Excelsior. Longfellow.