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The act of disinterring, or taking out of the earth; exhumation.

e Jews in their dispersion retained their rites and ceremonies; a great dispersion of the human family took place at the building of Babel. The days of your slaughter and of your dispersions are accomplished. Jer. xxv. 34.

Mood; humor. As I perchance hereafter shall think meet To put an antic disposition on. Shak.

The act of dissecting an animal or plant; as, dissection of the human body was held sacrilege till the time of Francis I.

Want of resemblance; unlikeness; dissimilitude; variety; as, the dissimilarity of human faces and forms. Sir W. Jones.

The extinction of life in the human body; separation of the soul from the body; death. We expected Immediate dissolution. Milton.

nature than that a man, naturally inclined to clemency, should show himself unkind and inhuman Hakewill.

unduly; to make disproportionate; to change the due proportions of. [Obs.] When . . . the humors in his body ben distempered. Chaucer.

e; as, the diversions of youth. "Public diversions." V. Knox. Such productions of wit and humor as expose vice and folly, furnish useful diversion to readers. Addison.

entertain; as, children are diverted with sports; men are diverted with works of wit and humor. We are amused by a tale, diverted by a comedy. C. J. Smith.

heavenly; excellent in the highest degree; supremely admirable; apparently above what is human. In this application, the word admits of comparison; as, the divinest mind. Sir J. Davies. "The divine Desdemona." Shak. A divine sentence is in the lips of the king. Prov. xvi. 10. But not to one in this benighted age Is th…

The quality of being divine; superhuman or supreme excellence. Shak.

Something divine or superhuman; supernatural power or virtue; something which inspires awe. They say there is divinity in odd numbers. Shak. There's such divinity doth hedge a king. Shak.

[culture] is after all a dainty and divisive quality, and can not reach to the depths of humanity. J. C. Shairp. -- Di*vi"sive*ly, adv. -- Di*vi"sive*ness, n. Carlyle.

Willingness to be taught; tractableness. The humble docility of little children is, in the New Testament, represented as a necessary preparative to the reception of the Christian faith. Beattie.

A fellow; -- used humorously or contemptuously; as, a sly dog; a lazy dog. [Colloq.]

Inhuman; cruel. Shak.

to the ground or floor; to or into a lower or an inferior condition; as, into a state of humility, disgrace, misery, and the like; into a state of rest; -- used with verbs indicating motion. It will be rain to-night. Let it come down. Shak. I sit me down beside the hazel grove. Tennyson. And that drags down his life.…

From a higher to a lower condition; toward misery, humility, disgrace, or ruin. And downward fell into a groveling swine. Milton.

osition, in prose or poetry, accommodated to action, and intended to exhibit a picture of human life, or to depict a series of grave or humorous actions of more than ordinary interest, tending toward some striking result. It is commonly designed to be spoken and represented by actors on the stage. A divine pastoral dra…