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ent or influence; a passive condition; -- opposed to action. A body at rest affords us no idea of any active power to move, and, when set is motion, it is rather a passion than an action in it. Locke.

their nimble tread. Milton. The mind is wholly passive in the reception of all its simple ideas. Locke.

To act as patron toward; to support; to countenance; to favor; to aid. The idea has been patronized by two States only. A. Hamilton.

ount Helicon. On this account he is, in modern times, associated with the Muses, and with ideas of poetic inspiration. Each spurs his jaded Pegasus apace. Byron.

Money; riches; lucre; gain; -- generally conveying the idea of something ill-gotten or worthless. It has no plural. "Mucky pelf." Spenser. "Paltry pelf." Burke. Can their pelf prosper, not got by valor or industry Fuller.

A genus of crinoids belonging to the Blastoidea. They have five petal-like ambulacra.

An idea; a notion. [Obs.] Sir M. Hale.

. 12. Inquire into the nature and properties of the things, . . . and thereby perfect our ideas of their distinct species. Locke. Perfecting press (Print.), a press in which the printing on both sides of the paper is completed in one passage through the machine.

A quality, endowment, or acquirement completely excellent; an ideal faultlessness; especially, the divine attribute of complete excellence. Shak. What tongue can her perfections tell Sir P. Sidney. To perfection, in the highest degree of excellence; perfectly; as, to imitate a model to perfection.

The use of more words than are necessary to express the idea; a roundabout, or indirect, way of speaking; circumlocution. "To describe by enigmatic periphrases." De Quincey.

A figure of speech in which an inanimate object or abstract idea is represented as animated, or endowed with personality; prosopopas, the floods clap their hands. "Confusion heards his voice." Milton.

One of the Phalangoidea.

Of or pertaining to Phalangoidea.

an apparent existence; an apparition; a specter; a phantasm; a sprite; an airy spirit; an ideal image. Strange phantoms rising as the mists arise. Pope. She was a phantom of delight. Wordsworth. Phantom ship. See Flying Dutchman, under Flying. -- Phantom tumor (Med.), a swelling, especially of the abdomen, due to musc…

A picture or hieroglyph representing and expressing an idea. -- Pic`to*graph"ic, a.

To draw or paint a resemblance of; to delineate; to represent; to form or present an ideal likeness of; to bring before the mind. "I . . . do picture it in my mind." Spenser. I have not seen him so pictured. Shak.

orming, or fitted to form, a good or pleasing picture; representing with the clearness or ideal beauty appropriate to a picture; expressing that peculiar kind of beauty which is agreeable in a picture, natural or artificial; graphic; vivid; as, a picturesque scene or attitude; picturesque language. What is picturesque…

Strict devotion; also, affectation of devotion. The Schöne Seele, that ideal of gentle pietism, in "Wilhelm Meister." W. Pater.

adapted for working with a sprocket wheel. -- Pitch line, or Pitch circle (Gearing), an ideal line, in a toothed gear or rack, bearing such a relation to a corresponding line in another gear, with which the former works, that the two lines will have a common velocity as in rolling contact; it usually cuts the teeth a…

One who plagiarizes; or purloins the words, writings, or ideas of another, and passes them off as his own; a literary thief; a plagiary.