Search the Dictionary

A familiar name for an aunt. In the southern United States a familiar term applied to aged negro women.

f an insect, esp. when reflecting a brilliant golden color, as that of some of the butterflies.

An amateur collector and breeder of insects, esp. of butterflies and moths; a lepidopterist.

An instrument applied to the ears to give aid in hearing; a kind of ear trumpet. Mansfield.

An examination by listening either directly with the ear (immediate auscultation) applied to parts of the body, as the abdomen; or with the stethoscope (mediate ~), in order to distinguish sounds recognized as a sign of health or of disease.

Favoring; favorable; propitious; -- applied to persons or things. "Thy auspicious mistress." Shak. "Auspicious gales." Pope.

haracter, office, or station, or mental or moral superiority, and the like; claim to be believed or obeyed; as, an historian of no authority; a magistrate of great authority.

Supplying its own power; -- applied to an instrument of the nature of a water-ram.

nature of an automaton; self-acting or self-regulating under fixed conditions; -- esp. applied to machinery or devices in which certain things formerly or usually done by hand are done by the machine or device itself; as, the automatic feed of a lathe; automatic gas lighting; an automatic engine or switch; an automatic…

A self-moving machine, or one which has its motive power within itself; -- applied chiefly to machines which appear to imitate spontaneously the motions of living beings, such as men, birds, etc.

otism. Autosuggestion is characteristic of certain mental conditions in which expectant belief tends to produce disturbance of function of one or more organs.

Foreign troops in the service of a nation at war; (rarely in sing.), a member of the allied or subsidiary force.

A quantity of oats paid by a tenant to a landlord in lieu of rent. Jacob.

ood of his servants. Deut. xxxii. 43. Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold. Milton. He had avenged himself on them by havoc such as England had never before seen. Macaulay.

Money paid by a tenant in lieu of the service of average.

A genus of marine bivalves, having a pearly interior, allied to the pearl oyster; -- so called from a supposed resemblance of the typical species to a bird.

To declare openly, as something believed to be right; to own or acknowledge frankly; as, a man avows his principles or his crimes. Which I to be the of Israel's God Avow, and challenge Dagon to the test. Milton.

To rouse from sleep.; to wake; to awaken. Where morning's earliest ray . . . awake her. Tennyson. And his disciples came to him, and awoke him, saying, Lord, save us; we perish. Matt. viii. 25.

Frightful; exceedingly bad; great; -- applied intensively; as, an awful bonnet; an awful boaster. [Slang]

Situated in the axis of anything; as an embryo which lies in the axis of a seed. Gray.