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A medicine or an article of food that aids digestion, or strengthens digestive power. Rice is . . . a great restorer of health, and a great digester. Sir W. Temple.

Pertaining to digestion; having the power to cause or promote digestion; as, the digestive ferments. Digestive cheese and fruit there sure will be. B. Jonson. Digestive apparatus, the organs of food digestion, esp. the alimentary canal and glands connected with it. -- Digestive salt, the chloride of potassium.…

3. Reuben, thou art my firstborn, . . . the excellency of dignity, and the excellency of power. Gen. xlix. 3.

Force; power; -- esp. in the phrase by dint of. Now you weep; and, I perceive, you feel The dint of pity. Shak. It was by dint of passing strength That he moved the massy stone at length. Sir W. Scott.

it employed by oculists in numbering glasses according to the metric system; a refractive power equal to that of a glass whose principal focal distance is one meter.

A letter or writing, usually under seal, conferring some privilege, honor, or power; a document bearing record of a degree conferred by a literary society or educational institution.

Having power to direct; tending to direct, guide, or govern; showing the way. Hooker. The precepts directive of our practice in relation to God. Barrow.

A body of directors; board of management; especially, a committee which held executive power in France under the first republic.

ed; deprivation or want of ability; absence of competent physical, intellectual, or moral power, means, fitness, and the like. Grossest faults, or disabilities to perform what was covenanted. Milton. Chatham refused to see him, pleading his disability. Bancroft.

To render unable or incapable; to destroy the force, vigor, or power of action of; to deprive of competent physical or intellectual power; to incapacitate; to disqualify; to make incompetent or unfit for service; to impair. A Christian's life is a perpetual exercise, a wrestling and warfare, for which sensual pleasure…

Having power to disassimilate; of the nature of disassimilation. Disassimilative processes constitute a marked feature in the life of animal cells. McKendrick.

The power or faculty of the mind by which it distinguishes one thing from another; power of viewing differences in objects, and their relations and tendencies; penetrative and discriminate mental vision; acuteness; sagacity; insight; as, the errors of youth often proceed from the want of discernment.…

The power of the mind to reason or infer by running, as it were, from one fact or reason to another, and deriving a conclusion; an exercise or act of this power; reasoning; range of reasoning faculty. [Obs.] Difficult, strange, and harsh to the discourses of natural reason. South. Sure he that made us with such large d…

tion; unrestrained except by discretion or judgment; as, an ambassador with discretionary powers.

g over a wide field; roving; digressive; desultory. "Discursive notices." De Quincey. The power he [Shakespeare] delights to show is not intense, but discursive. Hazlitt. A man rather tacit than discursive. Carlyle.

To free from enchantment; to deliver from the power of charms or spells; to free from fascination or delusion. Haste to thy work; a noble stroke or two Ends all the charms, and disenchants the grove. Dryden.

To deprive of corporate powers, rights, or privileges; to divest of the condition of a corporate body.

Releasing from obligation. "Disobligatory power." Charles I.

Granting, or authorized to grant, dispensations. "Dispensatory power." Bp. Rainbow.

Tending to disperse. Dispersive power (Opt.), the relative effect of a material in separating the different rays of light by refraction, as when the substance is formed into a prism. -- Dis*pers"ive*ness, n.