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The course of action or the thing offered in place of another. If this demand is refused the alternative is war. Lewis. With no alternative but death. Longfellow.

an one meaning; an equivocal word or expression. No shadow of ambiguity can rest upon the course to be pursued. I. Taylor. The words are of single signification, without any ambiguity. South.

of being understood in either of two or more possible senses; equivocal; as, an ambiguous course; an ambiguous expression. What have been thy answers What but dark, Ambiguous, and with double sense deluding Milton.

A phrase, discourse, or proposition, susceptible of two interpretations; and hence, of uncertain meaning. It differs from equivocation, which arises from the twofold sense of a single term.

Ambiguous discourse; amphibology. If it oracle contrary to our interest or humor, we will create an amphiboly, a double meaning where there is none. Whitlock.

A syllabus, or table of the principal heads of a discourse, disposed in their natural order.

Produced without concourse of sexes.

r intellectual, for the purpose of examining its parts; analysis; as, the anatomy of a discourse.

A discourse on angels, or a body of doctrines in regard to angels. The same mythology commanded the general consent; the same angelology, demonology. Milman.

A dam or mole made in the course of a stream for the purpose of regulating the flow of a system of irrigation. [India] Brande & C.

A counter-statement of facts in a course of pleadings; a confutation of what the other party has alleged; a responsive declaration by a witness in reply to a question. In Equity, it is the usual form of defense to the complainant's charges in his bill. Bouvier.

hence, comparable. What wit and policy of man is answerable to their discreet and orderly course Holland. This revelation . . . was answerable to that of the apostle to the Thessalonians. Milton.

The earlier events of one's life; previous principles, conduct, course, history. J. H. Newman. If the troops . . . prove worthy of their antecedents, the victory is surely ours. Gen. G. McClellan.

A discourses on flowers. [R.]

Tending to interrupt or destroy social intercourse; averse to society, or hostile to its existence; as, antisocial principles.

pathy or sluggishness in his nature which led him . . . to leave events to take their own course. Prescott. According to the Stoics, apathy meant the extinction of the passions by the ascendency of reason. Fleming.

A figure in which the speaker professes to be at a loss what course to pursue, where to begin to end, what to say, etc.

eech by which the orator or writer suddenly breaks off from the previous method of his discourse, and addresses, in the second person, some person or thing, absent or present; as, Milton's apostrophe to Light at the beginning of the third book of "Paradise Lost."

Resort to physical means; recourse. Every milder method is to be tried, before a nation makes an appeal to arms. Kent.

plying as a means; the employment of means to accomplish an end; specific use. If a right course . . . be taken with children, there will not be much need of the application of the common rewards and punishments. Locke.