Search the Dictionary

The quality or state of being useful; usefulness; production of good; profitableness to some valuable end; as, the utility of manure upon land; the utility of the sciences; the utility of medicines. The utility of the enterprises was, however, so great and obvious that all opposition proved useless. Macaulay.…

The condition of rarefaction, or reduction of pressure below that of the atmosphere, in a vessel, as the condenser of a steam engine, which is nearly exhausted of air or steam, etc.; as, a vacuum of 26 inches of mercury, or 13 pounds per square inch. Vacuum brake, a kind of continuous brake operated by exhausting the a…

sisting of a simple or branched mass of cellular tissue, or educed to a single cell. Reproduction effected variously. Divided into Algæ, which contain chlorophyll or its equivalent, and which live upon air and water, and Fungi, which contain no chlorophyll, and live on organic matter. (Lichens are now believed to be fu…

Active quality or power; capacity or power adequate to the production of a given effect; energy; strength; potency; efficacy; as, the virtue of a medicine. Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about. Mark v. 30. A man was driven to depend for his security against misundersta…

Of or pertaining to voltaism, or voltaic electricity; as, voltaic induction; the voltaic arc.

To procure or sustain a reduction of flesh; -- said of a jockey in preparation for a race, etc.

1. -- Wave of vibration (Physics), a wave which consists in, or is occasioned by, the production and transmission of a vibratory state from particle to particle through a body. -- Wave surface. (a) (Physics) A surface of simultaneous and equal displacement of the particles composing a wave of vibration. (b) (Geom.) A…

patented in March, 1897. Marconi employed electric waves of high frequency set up by an induction coil in an oscillator, these waves being launched into space through a lofty antenna. The receiving apparatus consisted of another antenna in circuit with a coherer and small battery for operating through a relay the ordin…

One who raises sheep for the production of wool. -- Wool"grow`ing, n.

Any written composition; a pamphlet; a work; a literary production; a book; as, the writings of Addison.

The fancied production of an organism of one kind by an organism of another. Huxley.

The sexual reproduction of animals.

Of or pertaining to zoögeny, animal production.

a proposed class or grand division (Zygophytes, Zygophyta, or Zygosporeæ), in which reproduction consists in the union of two similar cells. Cf. Oöphyte.