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To play the duke. [Poetic] Lord Angelo dukes it well in his absence. Shak.

Absence of mind; revery. Locke.

A method of determining the presence or absence of life in an animal organism with a current of electricity, by noting the presence or absence of muscular contraction.

e or quality of being elegant; beauty as resulting from choice qualities and the complete absence of what deforms or impresses unpleasantly; grace given by art or practice; fine polish; refinement; -- said of manners, language, style, form, architecture, etc. That grace that elegance affords. Drayton. The endearing ele…

hence, pleasing to good taste; characterized by grace, propriety, and refinement, and the absence of every thing offensive; exciting admiration and approbation by symmetry, completeness, freedom from blemish, and the like; graceful; tasteful and highly attractive; as, elegant manners; elegant style of composition; an e…

The state of being empty; absence of contents; void space; vacuum; as, the emptiness of a vessel; emptiness of the stomach.

An attorney who sufficiently excuses the absence of another.

To become pale through disease or absence of light.

Paleness produced by absence of light, or by disease. Dunglison.

x parte hearing or evidence (Law), that which is had or taken by one side or party in the absence of the other. Hearings before grand juries, and affidavits, are ex parte. Wharton's Law Dict. Burrill.

A license for absence from a college or a religious house. [Eng.] Shipley.

be wanting; to fall short; to be or become deficient in any measure or degree up to total absence; to cease to be furnished in the usual or expected manner, or to be altogether cut off from supply; to be lacking; as, streams fail; crops fail. As the waters fail from the sea. Job xiv. 11. Till Lionel's issue fails, his…

absence of merit. [WordNet 1.5]

ing out, commencement of action, being, state, occurrence, etc., or procedure, emanation, absence, separation, etc., are to be expressed. It is construed with, and indicates, the point of space or time at which the action, state, etc., are regarded as setting out or beginning; also, less frequently, the source, the cau…

oldier to be absent from service for a certain time; also, the document granting leave of absence.

A body obtained from hemoglobin, by the action of reducing agents in the absence of oxygen.

The absence of correspondence, or relation, in type of structure; lack of analogy between parts, owing to their being composed of different elements, or of like elements in different proportions; variation in structure from the normal form; -- opposed to homology.

The condition or quality of being an idiot; absence, or marked deficiency, of sense and intelligence. I will undertake to convict a man of idiocy, if he can not see the proof that three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles. F. W. Robertson.

to form a likeness of by the fancy or recollection; to imagine. Condemn'd whole years in absence to deplore, And image charms he must behold no more. Pope.

The quality of being impersonal; want or absence of personality.