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orr on which one depends for supply or support; means of overcoming a difficulty; resort; expedient. Threat'nings mixed with prayers, his last resource. Dryden.

ct of talk. -- To ride and tie, to take turn with another in labor and rest; -- from the expedient adopted by two persons with one horse, one of whom rides the animal a certain distance, and then ties him for the use of the other, who is coming up on foot. Fielding. -- To ride down. (a) To ride over; to trample down…

ck and forth; as, to rub the flesh with the hand; to rub wood with sandpaper. It shall be expedient, after that body is cleaned, to rub the body with a coarse linen cloth. Sir T. Elyot.

Hesitation as to action from the difficulty of determining what is right or expedient; unwillingness, doubt, or hesitation proceeding from motives of conscience. He was made miserable by the conflict between his tastes and his scruples. Macaulay. To make scruple, to hesitate from conscientious motives; to scruple. Lock…

To put off or out of the way by some expedient. "I shifted him away." Shak. To shift off, to delay; to defer; to put off; to lay aside. -- To shift the scene, to change the locality or the surroundings, as in a play or a story. Shift the scene for half an hour; Time and place are in thy power. Swift.…

Destitute of expedients, or not using successful expedients; characterized by failure, especially by failure to provide for one's own support, through negligence or incapacity; hence, lazy; improvident; thriftless; as, a shiftless fellow; shiftless management. -- Shift"less*ly, adv. -- Shift"less*ness, n.…

Full of, or ready with, shifts; fertile in expedients or contrivance. Wright. Shifty and thrifty as old Greek or modern Scot, there were few things he could not invent, and perhaps nothing he could not endure. C. Kingsley.

To use arts or expedients; to make shift. Your life, good master, Must shuffle for itself. Shak.

To be expedient. [Obs.] Wyclif (2 Cor. xii. 1.)

That which closes or fills up an opening or gap; hence, a temporary expedient. Moral prejudices are the stop-gaps of virtue. Hare.

ipe; usually, the low bush bean. -- To have two strings to one's bow, to have a means or expedient in reserve in case the one employed fails.

about by mutual compromises or concessions. [Obs.] However, I forejudge not any probable expedient, any temperament that can be found in things of this nature, so disputable on their side. Milton.

ng or casting; to cast; specifically, to cast dice. To throw about, to cast about; to try expedients. [R.]

Saving time; as, a timesaving expedient.

ually applied to a ponderous volume. Tomes of fable and of dream. Cowper. A more childish expedient than that to which he now resorted is not to be found in all the tomes of the casuists. Macaulay.

u say. Thackeray. To put to one's trumps, or To put on one's trumps, to force to the last expedient, or to the utmost exertion. But when kings come so low as to fawn upon philosophy, which before they neither valued nor understood, it is a sign that fails not, they are then put to their last trump. Milton. Put the hous…

Not advisable; inadvisable; inexpedient. Lowth. -- Un`ad*vis"a*bly, adv.