Search the Dictionary

The act or art of composing and rendering music, poetry, and the like, extemporaneously; as, improvisation on the organ.

One who composes and sings or recites rhymes and short poems extemporaneously. [Written also improvisatore.]

rticulation or intelligible distinctness, as speech or words. Music which is inarticulate poesy. Dryden.

Reception; a taking in. [R.] Poe.

India. [Poetical] Shak. Milton.

To compose; to write, as a poem. Wounded I sing, tormented I indite. Herbert.

To lead in; to introduce. [Obs.] The poet may be seen inducing his personages in the first Iliad. Pope.

ve to call it, our inferior nature. Burke. Whether they are equal or inferior to my other poems, an author is the most improper judge. Dryden.

One who informs, animates, or inspires. [Obs.] Thomson. Nature, informer of the poet's art. Pope.

Ingrateful. [Obs. or Poetic] Bacon.

To have residence in a place; to dwell; to live; to abide. [Archaic or Poetic] Shak. They say wild beasts inhabit here. Waller.

Insomusch as that field is called . . . Aceldama. Acts i. 19. Simonides was an excellent poet, insomuch that he made his fortune by it. L'Estrange.

communicate inspiration to; as, to inspire a child with sentiments of virtue. Erato, thy poet's mind inspire, And fill his soul with thy celestial fire. Dryden.

Instantly. [Poetic] Instant he flew with hospitable haste. Pope.

description; intelligible pronunciation, writing, etc. The intelligible forms of ancient poets. Coleridge.

That which is within; the interior. [Poetic] Mrs. Browning.

bricate mentally; to forge; -- in a good or a bad sense; as, to invent the machinery of a poem; to invent a falsehood. Whate'er his cruel malice could invent. Milton. He had invented some circumstances, and put the worst possible construction on others. Sir W. Scott.

on. They lay no less than a want of invention to his charge; a capital crime, . . . for a poet is a maker. Dryden.

a divine being. Sweet invocation of a child; most pretty and pathetical! Shak. The whole poem is a prayer to Fortune, and the invocation is divided between the two deities. Addison.

l. Ionic dialect (Gr. Gram.), a dialect of the Greek language, used in Ionia. The Homeric poems are written in what is designated old Ionic, as distinguished from new Ionic, or Attic, the dialect of all cultivated Greeks in the period of Athenian prosperity and glory. -- Ionic foot. (Pros.) See Ionic, n., 1. -- Ionic…