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An instrument for observing the boiling point of liquids, especially for determining the alcoholic strength of a mixture by the temperature at which it boils.

ng from stated methods, usual practice, or established forms or laws; deviating from an appointed sphere or way; departing from the usual course; irregular; anomalous; odd; as, eccentric conduct. "This brave and eccentric young man." Macaulay. He shines eccentric, like a comet's blaze. Savage. Eccentric anomaly. (Astro…

ind of swordplay in which backswords or cutlasses are used, and the edge, rather than the point, is employed. -- Edge rail. (Railroad) (a) A rail set on edge; -- applied to a rail of more depth than width. (b) A guard rail by the side of the main rail at a switch. Knight. -- Edge railway, a railway having the rails s…

in producing conviction of sin and acceptance of salvation by Christ, -- one of the five points of Calvinism. See Calvinism.

ice; predestination of individuals as objects of mercy and salvation; -- one of the "five points" of Calvinism. There is a remnant according to the election of grace. Rom. xi. 5.

atter of electricity; lightning. -- Electrical image (Elec.), a collection of electrical points regarded as forming, by an analogy with optical phenomena, an image of certain other electrical points, and used in the solution of electrical problems. Sir W. Thomson. -- Electrical light, the light produced by a current…

Sometimes a curve, or surface, or volume is considered as described by a moving point, or curve, or surface, the latter being at any instant called an element of the former.

An elector or chooser; one of two persons appointed by a court to return a jury or serve a writ when the sheriff and the coroners are disqualified.

Removal to a distance; withdrawal; a being at a distance; distance. The distant points in the celestial expanse appear to the eye in so small a degree of elongation from one another, as bears no proportion to what is real. Glanvill.

An aperture with slant sides in a wall or parapet, through which cannon are pointed and discharged; a crenelle. See Illust. of Casemate.

The extreme or last point or part of any material thing considered lengthwise (the extremity of breadth being side); hence, extremity, in general; the concluding part; termination; close; limit; as, the end of a field, line, pole, road; the end of a year, of a discourse; put an end to pain; -- opposed to Ant: beginning…

ing, or covered with, a sleeve; -- said of the chief when lines are drawn from the middle point of the upper edge upper edge to the sides.

To appoint hereditary possessor. [Obs.] To entail him and his heirs unto the crown. Shak.

on or above an artery; -- applied esp. to the branches of the bronchi given off above the point where the pulmonary artery crosses the bronchus.

A curve traced by a point in the circumference of a circle which rolls on the convex side of a fixed circle.

A short poem treating concisely and pointedly of a single thought or event. The modern epigram is so contrived as to surprise the reader with a witticism or ingenious turn of thought, and is often satirical in character. Dost thou think I care for a satire or an epigram Shak.

Suitable to epigrams; belonging to epigrams; like an epigram; pointed; piquant; as, epigrammatic style, wit, or sallies of fancy.

One who writes in an affectedly pointed style. Epigrammatizers of our English prose style. Coleridge.

A fixed point of time, established in history by the occurrence of some grand or remarkable event; a point of time marked by an event of great subsequent influence; as, the epoch of the creation; the birth of Christ was the epoch which gave rise to the Christian era. In divers ages, . . . divers epochs of time were use…

Belonging to an epoch; of the nature of an epoch. "Epochal points." Shedd.