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s a mode if motion, being in general a form of molecular disturbance or vibration. It was formerly supposed to be a subtile, imponderable fluid, to which was given the name caloric.

To impregnate with sulphureted hydrogen gas, formerly called hepatic gas. On the right . . . were two wells of hepatized water. Barrow.

An extensive division of Mammalia. It formerly included the Proboscidea, Hyracoidea, Perissodactyla, and Artiodactyla, but by later writers it is generally restricted to the two latter groups (Ungulata). They feed almost exclusively upon vegetation.

Formerly, a payment or tribute of arms or military accouterments, or the best beast, or chattel, due to the lord on the death of a tenant; in modern use, a customary tribute of goods or chattels to the lord of the fee, paid on the decease of a tenant. Blackstone. Bouvier. Heriot custom, a heriot depending on usage. --…

A heart-shaped bulbous root, about the size of a finger, brought from Turkey, formerly used as a cathartic.

n European heron (Ardea cinerea) is remarkable for its directly ascending flight, and was formerly hunted with the larger falcons.

A tax formerly paid to the kings of England for every hide of land. [Written also hydage.]

ent Egyptian writing; a modified form of hieroglyphics, tending toward a cursive hand and formerly supposed to be the sacerdotal character, as the demotic was supposed to be that of the people. It was a false notion of the Greeks that of the three kinds of writing used by the Egyptians, two -- for that reason called hi…

steam at high pressure is used. It may be either a condensing or a noncondensing engine. Formerly the term was used only of the latter. See Steam engine.

Formerly, one of the four terms of the courts of common law in England, beginning on the eleventh of January and ending on the thirty-first of the same month, in each year; -- so called from the festival of St. Hilary, January 13th.

used as a pronominal adjective or adjective pronoun; as, tell John his papers are ready; formerly used also for its, but this use is now obsolete. No comfortable star did lend his light. Shak. Who can impress the forest, bid the tree Unfix his earth-bound root Shak.

Stop! stand still! hold! -- a word now used by teamsters, but formerly to order the cessation of anything. [Written also whoa, and, formerly, hoo.] The duke . . . pulled out his sword and cried "Hoo!" Chaucer. An herald on a scaffold made an hoo. Chaucer.

A small, strong-winged European falcon (Falco subbuteo), formerly trained for hawking.

A frightful goblin; an imp; a bugaboo; also, a name formerly given to the household spirit, Robin Goodfellow. Macaulay.

A holiday commemorating the expulsion of the Danes, formerly observed on the second Tuesday after Easter; -- called also hocktide. [Eng.] [Written also hokeday.]

Applied to coarse cloth made of undyed wool, formerly worn by Scotch peasants. [Scot.]

dness. Israel was holiness unto the Lord. Jer.ii.3. His holiness, a title of the pope; -- formerly given also to Greek bishops and Greek emperors.

a sweet-scented grass (Hierochloa borealis and H. alpina). In the north of Europe it was formerly strewed before church doors on saints' days; whence the name. It is common in the northern and western parts of the United States. Called also vanilla, or Seneca, grass. -- Holy Innocents' day, Childermas day. -- Holy L…

A mercantile establishment or factory for foreign trade in China, as formerly at Canton; a succession of offices connected by a common passage and used for business or storage. Hong merchant, one of the few Chinese merchants who, previous to the treaty of 1842, formed a guild which had the exclusive privilege of tradin…

the sensible horizon and a line to the visible horizon, the latter always being below the former. -- Rational horizon, and Sensible horizon. (Astron.) See def. 2, above. -- Visible horizon. See definitions 1 and 2, above.