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g in beauty, loveliness, or amiability; graceful; excellent. Since the birth of Cain, the first male child, . . . There was not such a gracious creature born. Shak.

Tyrian purple. All in a robe of darkest grain. Milton. Doing as the dyers do, who, having first dipped their silks in colors of less value, then give' them the last tincture of crimson in grain. Quoted by Coleridge, preface to Aids to Reflection.

Rudiments; first principles, as of grammar. [Obs.] Ford.

A man of elevated rank or station; a nobleman. In Spain, a nobleman of the first rank, who may be covered in the king's presence.

rers, into direct commercial relations, without intervention of middlemen or traders. The first grange was organized in 1867. [U. S.]

One of the legal tender notes of the United States; -- first issued in 1862, and having the devices on the back printed with green ink, to prevent alterations and counterfeits.

A step. See Gree, a step. [Obs.] The top of the ladder, or first greeze, is this. Latimer.

A young salmon after its first return from the sea.

foundation of knowledge, belief, or conviction; a premise, reason, or datum; ultimate or first principle; cause of existence or occurrence; originating force or agency; as, the ground of my hope.

orms the foundation or support of anything; the basis; the essential or fundamental part; first principle. Dryden.

or the performance of some duty, in case of the failure of another person, who is, in the first instance, liable to such payment or performance; an engagement which secures or insures another against a contingency; a warranty; a security. Same as Guaranty. His interest seemed to be a guarantee for his zeal. Macaulay.…

a person incapable of managing his own affairs. Of the several species of guardians, the first are guardians by nature. -- viz., the father and (in some cases) the mother of the child. Blockstone. Guardian ad litem ( (Law), a guardian appointed by a court of justice to conduct a particular suit. -- Guardians of the…

oncerning, without knowledge or means of knowledge; to judge of at random; to conjecture. First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess. Pope.

sue of sovereigns in 1817. The guinea, so called from the Guinea gold out of which it was first struck, was proclaimed in 1663, and to go for twenty shillings; but it never went for less than twenty-one shillings. Pinkerton. Guinea corn. (Bot.) See Durra. -- Guinea Current (Geog.), a current in the Atlantic Ocean sett…

miliarize. Our English dogs, who were habituated to a colder clime. Sir K. Digby. Men are first corrupted . . . and next they habituate themselves to their vicious practices. Tillotson.

ul manner; to make rough or mangle by cutting; as, a boy haggles a stick of wood. Suffolk first died, and York, all haggled o'er, Comes to him, where in gore he lay insteeped. Shak.

alf ape (Zoöl.), a lemur. -- Half back. (Football) See under 2d Back. -- Half bent, the first notch, for the sear point to enter, in the tumbler of a gunlock; the halfcock notch. -- Half binding, a style of bookbinding in which only the back and corners are in leather. -- Half boarder, one who boards in part; speci…

camera and the object of a screen. The name alludes to the fact that this process was the first that was practically successful in reproducing the half tones of the photograph.

To set the cock of (a firearm) at the first notch. To go off halfcocked. (a) To be discharged prematurely, or with the trigger at half cock; -- said of a firearm. (b) To do or say something without due thought or care. [Colloq. or Low]

The first, or preaxial, digit of the hind limb, corresponding to the pollux in the fore limb; the great toe; the hind toe of birds.