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efore Christmas. -- Christmas fern (Bot.), an evergreen North American fern (Aspidium acrostichoides), which is much used for decoration in winter. -- Christmas flower, Christmas rose, the black hellebore, a poisonous plant of the buttercup family, which in Southern Europe often produces beautiful roselike flowers mi…

Aspect of the heavens at the time of taking to one's sick bed, by which the prognostics of recovery or death were made.

According to the Gnostics, an agent or one employed by the Supreme Being to create the material universe and man.

To ascertain by diagnosis; to diagnosticate. See Diagnosticate.

Distinguishing mark; diagnostic. [Obs.] Sir T. Browne.

To use or practice divination; to foretell by divination; to utter prognostications. The prophets thereof divine for money. Micah iii. 11.

Pertaining to, held by, or like, the Docetæ. "Docetic Gnosticism." Plumptre.

One of a sect of Asiatic Gnostics of the time of the Emperor Trajan.

Relating to the inspection of entrails for prognostication. [Obs.] Sir T. Browne.

Prognostication; presage. [Obs.]

Ominous foreboding; superstitious prognostication. [Obs.] L'Estrange.

give notice of the approach of others; a harbinger; a sign foreshowing something; a prognostic; as, the forerunner of a fever. Whither the forerunner in for us entered, even Jesus. Heb. vi. 20. My elder brothers, my forerunners, came. Dryden.

To show or exhibit beforehand; to give foreknowledge of; to prognosticate; to foretell. Your looks foreshow You have a gentle heart. Shak. Next, like Aurora, Spenser rose, Whose purple blush the day foreshows. Denham.

To think beforehand; to anticipate in the mind; to prognosticate. [Obs.] The soul of every man Prophetically doth forethink thy fall. Shak.

Prognostic; previous omen. Sir P. Sidney.

The deeper wisdom; knowledge of spiritual truth, such as was claimed by the Gnostics.

Prognostication; soothsaying. [Obs.] Cockeram.

A follower of Heracleon of Alexandria, a Judaizing Gnostic, in the early history of the Christian church.

One who is impeccable; esp., one of a sect of Gnostic heretics who asserted their sinlessness. God is infallible, impeccable, and absolutely perfect. P. Skelton.

cially, a systematic apathy regarding what is true or false in religion or philosophy; agnosticism. The indifferentism which equalizes all religions and gives equal rights to truth and error. Cardinal Manning.