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it asserting; undisguised token of a ground or side taken on any subject; proclamation; exposition; as, the declaration of an opinion; a declaration of war, etc.

Consisting of two rising and two falling clauses, placed in alternate opposition to each other; as, a decussated period.

and on the defensive, to be or stand in a state or posture of defense or resistance, in opposition to aggression or attack.

The act of defying, putting in opposition, or provoking to combat; a challenge; a provocation; a summons to combat. A war without a just defiance made. Dryden. Stood for her cause, and flung defiance down. Tennyson.

To turn aside; to deviate from a right or a horizontal line, or from a proper position, course or direction; to swerve. At some part of the Azores, the needle deflecteth not, but lieth in the true meridian. Sir T. Browne. To deflect from the line of truth and reason. Warburton.

The point or step of progression to which a person has arrived; rank or station in life; position. "A dame of high degree." Dryden. "A knight is your degree." Shak. "Lord or lady of high degree." Lowell.

Holding a delegated position. Nash.

The shade itself; neither the darkest nor the lightest in a composition. Also called half tint.

umed premises; -- these premises being definitions, axioms, and previously established propositions. Direct, or Positive, demonstration (Logic & Math.), one in which the correct conclusion is the immediate sequence of reasoning from axiomatic or established premises; -- opposed to Indirect, or Negative, demonstration (…

The opposition of nutrition; the failure of nutrition causing the breaking down of tissue.

To bear witness; to testify under oath; to make deposition. Then, seeing't was he that made you to despose, Your oath, my lord, is vain and frivolous. Shak.

The act of depositing; deposition. [Obs.] Sir T. Browne.

e parts of the body, in which the arteries empty directly into the veins without the interposition of capillaries. Flint. -- De*riv"a*tive*ly, adv. -- De*riv"a*tive*ness, n.

The invention and conduct of the subject; the disposition of every part, and the general order of the whole. Arts of design, those into which the designing of artistic forms and figures enters as a principal part, as architecture, painting, engraving, sculpture. -- School of design, one in which are taught the inventi…

Final; serving to complete; conclusive. [Obs.] "Desitive propositions." I. Watts.

a process of reasoning which involves the denial of the first of a series of dependent propositions as a consequence of the denial of the last; a species of reductio ad absurdum. Whately.

Deposal from a throne; deposition from regal power.

An explosion or sudden report made by the instantaneous decomposition or combustion of unstable substances' as, the detonation of gun cotton.

rly indicated the second in a regular series of compound in the series, and not to its composition, but which is now generally employed in the same sense as bi- or di-, although little used.

power. These serve to develop its tenets. Milner. The 20th was spent in strengthening our position and developing the line of the enemy. The Century.