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Diminution or reduction of strength, efficacy, or value; degeneration; deterioration. The development and degradation of the alphabetic forms can be traced. I. Taylor (The Alphabet).

idized fish oil, which extracts their soluble albuminoids. It was formerly solely a by-product of chamois leather manufacture, but is now made for its own sake, being valuable as a dressing for hides.

To carry on; to conduct. Warner.

Nice propriety of manners or conduct; susceptibility or tenderness of feeling; refinement; fastidiousness; and hence, in an exaggerated sense, effeminacy; as, great delicacy of behavior; delicacy in doing a kindness; delicacy of character that unfits for earnest action. You know your mother's delicacy in this point. Co…

efined; gentle; scrupulous not to trespass or offend; considerate; -- said of manners, conduct, or feelings; as, delicate behavior; delicate attentions; delicate thoughtfulness.

To manage; to conduct; to treat. [Our] clergy have with violence demeaned the matter. Milton.

Management; treatment; conduct. [Obs.] God commits the managing so great a trust . . . wholly to the demeanor of every grown man. Milton.

That which deserves blame; ill desert; a fault; a vice; misconduct; -- the opposite of Ant: merit. They see no merit or demerit in any man or any action. Burke. Secure, unless forfeited by any demerit or offense. Sir W. Temple.

To show, or make evident, by reasoning or proof; to prove by deduction; to establish so as to exclude the possibility of doubt or denial. We can not demonstrate these things so as to show that the contrary often involves a contradiction. Tillotson.

r established premises; -- opposed to Indirect, or Negative, demonstration (called also reductio ad absurdum), in which the correct conclusion is an inference from the demonstration that any other hypothesis must be incorrect.

Removing obstructions; having power to clear or open the natural ducts of the fluids and secretions of the body; aperient. -- n.

The act of depriving of polarity, or the result of such action; reduction to an unpolarized condition. Depolarization of light (Opt.), a change in the plane of polarization of rays, especially by a crystalline medium, such that the light which had been extinguished by the analyzer reappears as if the polarization had b…

To carry or demean; to conduct; to behave; -- followed by the reflexive pronoun. Let an ambassador deport himself in the most graceful manner befor a prince. Pope.

Manner of deporting or demeaning one's self; manner of acting; conduct; carrige; especially, manner of acting with respect to the courtesies and duties of life; behavior; demeanor; bearing. The gravity of his deportment carried him safe through many difficulties. Swift.

The falling of value; reduction of worth. Burke.

That which is derived; a derivative; a deduction. From the Euphrates into an artificial derivation of that river. Gibbon.

That which is derived; deduction; inference. [Obs.] I offer these derivements from these subjects. W. Montagu.

Of or pertaining to a desert; forsaken; without life or cultivation; unproductive; waste; barren; wild; desolate; solitary; as, they landed on a desert island. He . . . went aside privately into a desert place. Luke ix. 10. Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air. Gray. Des…

The invention and conduct of the subject; the disposition of every part, and the general order of the whole. Arts of design, those into which the designing of artistic forms and figures enters as a principal part, as architecture, painting, engraving, sculpture. -- School of design, one in which are taught the inventi…

using destruction; tending to bring about ruin, death, or devastation; ruinous; fatal; productive of serious evil; mischievous; pernicious; -- often with of or to; as, intemperance is destructive of health; evil examples are destructive to the morals of youth. Time's destructive power. Wordsworth. Destructive distillat…