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either in rank, office, or celebrity; social or moral loftiness; high rank; distinction; preferment. Milton. You 've too a woman's heart, which ever yet Affected eminence, wealth, sovereignty. Shak.

To pronounce equal; to compare as equal. Which we equalize, and perhaps would willingly prefer to the Iliad. Orrery.

A person or thing regarded with peculiar favor; one treated with partiality; one preferred above others; especially, one unduly loved, trusted, and enriched with favors by a person of high rank or authority. Committing to a wicked favorite All public cares. Milton.

re can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity. Rambler. Preferred by friendship, and not chosen by sufficiency. Spenser.

place of confinement, especially for minor offenses or provisional imprisonment; a jail. [Preferably, and in the United States usually, written jail.] Commission of general gaol delivery, an authority conferred upon judges and others included in it, for trying and delivering every prisoner in jail when the judges, upon…

Preferably; by choice. [Obs.] Chaucer.

ocate (a candidate, a measure, etc.). (b) To seek to acquire or attain to (wealth, honor, preferment, etc.) (c) To complete for (a reward, election, etc.). (d) To make the object of one's labors, studies, etc. He was as ready to go in for statistics as for anything else. Dickens. -- To go in to or unto. (a) To enter th…

be poor and true.] C. Mundi (Trans. ). Him had been lever to be syke. [To him it had been preferable to be sick.] Fabian. For him was lever have at his bed's head Twenty bookes, clad in black or red, . . . Than robes rich, or fithel, or gay sawtrie. Chaucer.

Healthy. See Hale (the preferable spelling).

By good fortune; fortunately; luckily. Preferred by conquest, happily o'erthrown. Waller.

guing; a declaimer. With them join'd all th' harangues of the throng, That thought to get preferment by the tongue. Dryden.

ce. The productions of a great genius, with many lapses an inadvertencies, are infinitely preferable to works of an inferior kind of author which are scrupulously exact. Addison.

A leaning or tendency of the mind, feelings, preferences, or will; propensity; a disposition more favorable to one thing than to another; favor; desire; love. A mere inclination to a thing is not properly a willing of that thing. South. How dost thou find the inclination of the people Shak.

In an indifferent manner; without distinction or preference; impartially; without concern, wish, affection, or aversion; tolerably; passably. That they may truly and indifferently minister justice, to the punishment of wickedness and vice, and to the maintenance of thy true religion, and virtue. Book of Com. Prayer [En…

retired. I have no Turkish proclivities, and I do not think that, after all, impaling is preferable as a mode of capital punishment to intraparietal hanging. Roll

; hateful; as, invidious distinctions. Agamemnon found it an invidious affair to give the preference to any one of the Grecian heroes. Broome. -- In*vid"i*ous*ly, adv. -- In*vid"i*ous*ness, n.

rivals, or the fidelity of friends; distrustful; having morbid fear of rivalry in love or preference given to another; painfully suspicious of the faithfulness of husband, wife, or lover. If the spirit of jealousy come upon him, and he be jealous of his wife. Num. v. 14. To both these sisters have I sworn my love: Each…

action, according to the determination or thought of the mind, whereby either of them is preferred to the other. Locke. This liberty of judgment did not of necessity lead to lawlessness. J. A. Symonds.

Pleasing; agreeable; acceptable; preferable. [Obs.] See Lief, adv., and Had as lief, under Had. Full lief me were this counsel for to hide. Chaucer. Death me liefer were than such despite. Spenser.

A liking; a preference; inclination; -- usually in pl.; as, we all have likes and dislikes.