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Given to pleasure seeking; disregardful of restraint; reckless; wild; dissipated; dissolute; as, a fast man; a fast liver. Thackeray. Fast and loose, now cohering, now disjoined; inconstant, esp. in the phrases to play at fast and loose, to play fast and loose, to act with giddy or reckless inconstancy or in a tricky m…

, Conscript fathers, etc. See under Apostolic, Conscript, etc. -- Father in God, a title given to bishops. -- Father of lies, the Devil. -- Father of the bar, the oldest practitioner at the bar. -- Fathers of the city, the aldermen. -- Father of the Faithful. (a) Abraham. Rom. iv. Gal. iii. 6-9. (b) Mohammed, or o…

The animals of any given area or epoch; as, the fauna of America; fossil fauna; recent fauna.

An allowance of provender given to a horse, cow, etc.; a meal; as, a feed of corn or oats.

A name given to a group of minerals, closely related in crystalline form, and all silicates of alumina with either potash, soda, lime, or, in one case, baryta. They occur in crystals and crystalline masses, vitreous in luster, and breaking rather easily in two directions at right angles to each other, or nearly so. The…

on; a cover; security; shield. Let us be backed with God and with the seas, Which he hath given for fence impregnable. Shak. A fence betwixt us and the victor's wrath. Addison.

The name given to Europeans by the Hindos. [Written also Feringhee.]

An authority for certain proceedings given by the Lord Chancellor's signature. Fiat money, irredeemable paper currency, not resting on a specie basis, but deriving its purchasing power from the declaratory fiat of the government issuing it.

e surface of an object; manner or style of finishing; as, a rough, dead, or glossy finish given to cloth, stone, metal, etc.

metallic salts, as those of antimony, strontium, barium, etc. -- Fire alarm (a) A signal given on the breaking out of a fire. (b) An apparatus for giving such an alarm. -- Fire annihilator, a machine, device, or preparation to be kept at hand for extinguishing fire by smothering it with some incombustible vapor or ga…

re, often variously colored. The skyrocket is a common form of firework. The name is also given to various combustible preparations used in war.

ntries, a decree or mandate issued by the sovereign; a royal order or grant; -- generally given for special objects, as to a traveler to insure him protection and assistance. [Written also firmaun.]

A name given in the East and West Indies to certain trees with brilliant blossoms, probably species of Cæsalpinia.

lging in flights, or wild and unrestrained sallies, of imagination, humor, caprice, etc.; given to disorder Proofs of my flighty and paradoxical turn of mind. Coleridge. A harsh disciplinarian and a flighty enthusiast. J. S. Har

The complete system of vegetable species growing without cultivation in a given locality, region, or period; a list or description of, or treatise on, such plants.

n of Florence, first struck in the twelfth century, and noted for its beauty. The name is given to different coins in different countries. The florin of England, first minted in 1849, is worth two shillings, or about 48 cents; the florin of the Netherlands, about 40 cents; of Austria, about 36 cents.…

The science of floating bodies. Center of flotation. (Shipbuilding) (a) The center of any given plane of flotation. (b) More commonly, the middle of the length of the load water line. Rankine. -- Plane, or Line, of flotation, the plane or line in which the horizontal surface of a fluid cuts a body floating in it. See…

The quantity of a fluid that crosses a unit area of a given surface in a unit of time.

A name given to the series of sandstones and schists overlying the true nummulitic formation in the Alps, and included in the Eocene Tertiary.

A basin or stone vessel in which water is contained for baptizing. That name was given me at the font. Shak.