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Threadlike defensive organs, composed largely of nettling cells (cnidæ), thrown out of the mouth or special pores of certain Actiniæ when irritated.

Resting satisfied or submissive; disposed tacitly to submit; assentive; as, an acquiescent policy.

Able or disposed to make acquisitions; acquiring; as, an acquisitive person or disposition.

Rising at sunset and setting at sunrise, as a star; -- opposed to cosmical.

From side to side; athwart; crosswise, or in a direction opposed to the length; quite over; as, a bridge laid across a river. Dryden. To come across, to come upon or meet incidentally. Freeman. -- To go across the country, to go by a direct course across a region without following the roads.

A state of reality or real existence as opposed to a possibility or possible existence. [Obs.] The seeds of plants are not at first in act, but in possibility, what they afterward grow to be. Hooker.

A supposed metal, said by Phipson to be contained in commercial zinc; -- so called because certain of its compounds are darkened by exposure to light.

A process or condition of acting or moving, as opposed to rest; the doing of something; exertion of power or force, as when one body acts on another; the effect of power exerted on one body by another; agency; activity; operation; as, the action of heat; a man of action. One wise in council, one in action brave. Pope.…

power or quality of acting; causing change; communicating action or motion; acting; -- opposed to Ant: passive, that receives; as, certain active principles; the powers of the mind.

Existing in act or reality; really acted or acting; in fact; real; -- opposed to potential, possible, virtual, speculative, coceivable, theoretical, or nominal; as, the actual cost of goods; the actual case under discussion.

r considers actually existing facts and conditions, rather than fancies or theories; -- opposed to idealist. J. Grote.

al operations, by passing under the divided vessel a needle, the ends of which are left exposed externally on the cutaneous surface. Simpson.

Sharp at the end; ending in a sharp point; pointed; -- opposed to blunt or obtuse; as, an acute angle; an acute leaf.

Not cyclic; not disposed in cycles or whorls; as: (a) (Bot.)

n. It is now a rhetorical or poetical name for the embodiment of impenetrable hardness. Opposed the rocky orb Of tenfold adamant, his ample shield. Milton.

The act of adding two or more things together; -- opposed to subtraction or diminution. "This endless addition or addibility of numbers." Locke.

Proper to be added; positive; -- opposed to subtractive.

nt; -- a word applied to those muscles of the body which pull one part towards another. Opposed to abducent.

The action by which the parts of the body are drawn towards its axis]; -- opposed to abduction. Dunglison.

f the body toward the middle line of the body, or closes extended parts of the body; -- opposed to abductor; as, the adductor of the eye, which turns the eye toward the nose. In the bivalve shells, the muscles which close the values of the shell are called adductor muscles. Verrill.