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k. The unlettered barbarians willingly accepted the aid of the lettered clergy, still chiefly of Roman birth, to reduce to writing the institutes of their forefathers. Milman.

neral of a color between white and steel-gray, with a metallic luster, and consisting chiefly of arsenic and iron.

e direction of an outgoing right-handed screw; counter-clockwise rotation; -- applied chiefly to the turning of the plane of polarization of light.

A dragon fly.

Light sails (Naut.), all the sails above the topsails, with, also, the studding sails and flying jib. Dana. -- Light sleeper, one easily wakened. -- Light weight, a prize fighter, boxer, wrestler, or jockey, who is below a standard medium weight. Cf. Feather weight, under Feather. [Cant] -- To make light of, to treat…

. Called also lightning discharger. -- Lightning bug (Zoöl.), a luminous beetle. See Firefly. -- Lightning conductor, a lightning rod. -- Lightning glance, a quick, penetrating glance of a brilliant eye. -- Lightning rod, a metallic rod set up on a building, or on the mast of a vessel, and connected with the earth…

A person of small impotance or mental ability. [Colloq., Chiefly U. S.]

To do anything with animation and quickness, as to skip, fly, or hop. [Prov. Eng.] Wordsworth.

dense like a blackberry. -- Bourbon lily (Bot.), Lilium candidum. See Illust. -- Butterfly lily. (Bot.) Same as Mariposa lily, in the Vocabulary. -- Lily daffodil (Bot.), a plant of the genus Narcissus, and its flower. -- Lily encrinite (Paleon.), a fossil encrinite, esp. Encrinus liliiformis. See Encrinite. -- L…

A rock consisting chiefly of calcium carbonate or carbonate of lime. It sometimes contains also magnesium carbonate, and is then called magnesian or dolomitic limestone. Crystalline limestone is called marble.

Underclothing, esp. the shirt, as being, in former times, chiefly made of linen. Linen draper, a dealer in linen. -- Linen prover, a small microscope for counting the threads in a given space in linen fabrics. -- Linen scroll, Linen pattern (Arch.), an ornament for filling panels, copied from the folds of a piece of…

A learned man; a man acquainted with literature; -- chiefly used in the plural. Now we are to consider that our bright ideal of a literatus may chance to be maimed. De Quincey.

il; an earthy mixture of clay and sand, with organic matter to which its fertility is chiefly due. We wash a wall of loam; we labor in vain. Hooker.

Long duration of life; length of life. The instances of longevity are chiefly amongst the abstemious. Arbuthnot.

elves to the cause of education and the care of destitute orphans, their labors being chiefly confined to the Western United States.

, a sorry lot; a bad lot. I, this winter, met with a very large lot of English heads, chiefly of the reign of James I. Walpole.

Courtship; -- chiefly in the phrase to make love, i. e., to court, to woo, to solicit union in marriage. Demetrius . . . Made love to Nedar's daughter, Helena, And won her soul. Shak.

bell used in fowling at night, to frighten birds, and, with a sudden light, to make them fly into a net. The fowler's lowbell robs the lark of sleep. King.

The faculty or power of voluntarily producing light, as in the firefly and glowworm.

To please; -- chiefly used impersonally. [Obs.] " Sith it lyketh you." Chaucer.