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The constituent quality or qualities which belong to any object, or class of objects, or on which they depend for being what they are (distinguished as real essence); the real being, divested of all logical accidents; that quality which constitutes or marks the true nature of anything; distinctive character; hence, vir…

Belonging to the essence, or that which makes an object, or class of objects, what it is. Majestic as the voice sometimes became, there was forever in it an essential character of plaintiveness. Hawthorne.

The great classes or orders of a community or state (as the clergy, the nobility, and the commonalty of England) or their representatives who administer the government; as, the estates of the realm (England), which are (1) the lords spiritual, (2) the lords temporal, (3) the commons.

To produce, as figures or designs, on mental, glass, or the like, by means of lines or strokes eaten in or corroded by means of some strong acid.

engraving by means of acid which eats away lines or surfaces left unprotected in metal, glass, or the like. See Etch, v. t.

d rules concerting duty, whether true or false; rules of practice in respect to a single class of human actions; as, political or social ethics; medical ethics. The completeness and consistency of its morality is the peculiar praise of the ethics which the Bible has taught. I. Taylor.

In an ethnological manner; by ethnological classification; as, one belonging ethnologically to an African race.

A male of the human species castrated; commonly, one of a class of such persons, in Oriental countries, having charge of the women's apartments. Some of them, in former times, gained high official rank.

One who affects excessive refinement and elegance of language; -- applied esp. to a class of writers, in the age of Elizabeth, whose productions are marked by affected conceits and high-flown diction.

A genus of elegant, glassy sponges, consisting of interwoven siliceous fibers, and growing in the form of a cornucopia; -- called also Venus's flower-basket.

ns, or acquirements; to be distinguished by superiority; as, to excel in mathematics, or classics. Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel. Gen. xlix. 4. Then peers grew proud in horsemanship t' excel. Pope.

xclusion; restriction by taking out something which would otherwise be included, as in a class, statement, rule.

Any one of a large class of substances obtained by extraction, and consisting largely of nitrogenous hydrocarbons, such as xanthin, hypoxanthin, and creatin extractives from muscle tissue.

ure, juice, or gum, as through pores or incisions; also, the substance exuded. Resins, a class of proximate principles, existing in almost all plants and appearing on the external surface of many of them in the form of exudations. Am. Cyc.

A small oval porcelain or glass cup, having a rim curved to fit the orbit of the eye. it is used in the application of liquid remedies to eyes; -- called also eyeglass.

cope or other optical instrument, through which the image formed by the mirror or object glass is viewed. Collimating eyepiece. See under Collimate. -- Negative, or Huyghenian, eyepiece, an eyepiece consisting of two plano-convex lenses with their curved surfaces turned toward the object glass, and separated from each…

ral function; especially, an original mental power or capacity for any of the well-known classes of mental activity; psychical or soul capacity; capacity for any of the leading kinds of soul activity, as knowledge, feeling, volition; intellectual endowment or gift; power; as, faculties of the mind or the soul. But know…

n. (c) To come within; to be ranged or reckoned with; to be subordinate to in the way of classification; as, these substances fall under a different class or order. -- To fall upon. (a) To attack. [See To fall on.] (b) To attempt; to have recourse to. "I do not intend to fall upon nice disquisitions." Holder. (c) To r…

One who fancies or has a special liking for, or interest in, a particular object or class or objects; hence, one who breeds and keeps for sale birds and animals; as, bird fancier, dog fancier, etc.

A sort of love song or light impromptu ballad. [Obs.] Shak. The fancy, all of a class who exhibit and cultivate any peculiar taste or fancy; hence, especially, sporting characters taken collectively, or any specific class of them, as jockeys, gamblers, prize fighters, etc. At a great book sale in London, which had cong…