Search the Dictionary

A person who is deaf and dumb; one who, through deprivation or defect of hearing, has either failed the acquire the power of speech, or has lost it. [See Illust. of Dactylology.] Deaf-mutes are still so called, even when, by artificial methods, they have been taught to speak imperfectly.

Total privation or loss; extinction; cessation; as, the death of memory. The death of a language can not be exactly compared with the death of a plant. J. Peile.

oss. Twit me with the decrements of my pendants. Ford. Rocks, mountains, and the other elevations of the earth suffer a continual decrement. Woodward.

A writ to commission private persons to do some act in place of a judge, as to examine a witness, etc. Bouvier.

Having a deep waist, as when, in a ship, the poop and forecastle are much elevated above the deck.

Privation by fraud; defrauding. [Obs.] Milton.

Deprivation of rank or office; degradation. [R.] Milton.

One of an ancient sect of philosophers, who cultivated learned conversation at meals.

A kind of novation by which a debtor, to be liberated from his creditor, gives him a third person, who becomes obliged in his stead to the creditor, or to the person appointed by him. Pothier.

Pleasing to the senses; refinedly; hence, adapted to please a nice or cultivated taste; nice; fine; elegant; as, a delicate dish; delicate flavor.

a denizen; to confer the rights of citizenship upon; to naturalize. [Obs.] There was a private act made for denizing the children of Richard HillStrype.

The laying bare of rocks by the washing away of the overlying earth, etc.; or the excavation and removal of them by the action of running water.

The act of setting aside a sovereign or a public officer; deprivation of authority and dignity; displacement; removal.

Deprivation. [R.]

A tract of land left dry by the sea, and fit for cultivation or use.

By derivation.

Derivation. [R.] The derival of e from a. Earle.

To trace the origin, descent, or derivation of; to recognize transmission of; as, he derives this word from the Anglo-Saxon. From these two causes . . . an ancient set of physicians derived all diseases. Arbuthnot.

Derivation, as from an ancestor; procedure by generation; lineage; birth; extraction. Dryden.

which may be capable of sustaining a population, but has been left unoccupied and uncultivated; a wilderness; a solitary place. He will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord. Is. li. 3.