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l harmony or fitness; mutual adaptation of parts; elegance; -- used chiefly of style of discourse. [R.] An exact concinnity and eveness of fancy. Howell.

To have discourse; to consult; to compare views; to deliberate. Festus, when he had conferred with the council, answered. Acts xxv. 12. You shall hear us confer of this. Shak.

Qualified for conversation; disposed to converse; sociable; free in discourse. While young, humane, conversable, and kind. Cowper.

Colloqual discourse; oral interchange of sentiments and observations; informal dialogue. The influence exercised by his [Johnson's] conversation was altogether without a parallel. Macaulay.

Familiar discourse; free interchange of thoughts or views; conversation; chat. Formed by thy converse happily to steer From grave to gay, from lively to severe. Pope.

To sketch, as with a crayon; to sketch or plan. He soon afterwards composed that discourse, conformably to the plan which he had crayoned out. Malone.

A discourse or treatise on crystallization.

Entertaining discourse. [Obs.] Chaucer.

oming, in words or behavior; propriety of form in social intercourse, in actions, or in discourse; proper formality; becoming ceremony; seemliness; hence, freedom from obscenity or indecorum; modesty. Observances of time, place, and of decency in general. Burke. Immodest words admit of no defense, For want of decency i…

A set or harangue; declamatory discourse.

To leave out of account; to omit. [Obs.] Defaulting unnecessary and partial discourses. Hales.

A discourse in which a question is discussed, or weighed and examined. Bacon.

A discourse or treatise on trees; the natural history of trees.

One who discourses on the skin and its diseases; one versed in dermatology.

A discourse formed on its theme, like variations on a musical air; a comment or comments. Upon that simplest of themes how magnificent a descant! De Quincey.

To discourse in dialogue. Fotherby.

for the expression of ideas; the construction, disposition, and application of words in discourse, with regard to clearness, accuracy, variety, etc.; mode of expression; language; as, the diction of Chaucer's poems. His diction blazes up into a sudden explosion of prophetic grandeur. De Quincey.

The act of digressing or deviating, esp. from the main subject of a discourse; hence, a part of a discourse deviating from its main design or subject. The digressions I can not excuse otherwise, than by the confidence that no man will read them. Sir W. Temple.

Prolixity; diffuse discourse. [Obs.] "What needeth greater dilatation" Chaucer.

of the motion of a celestial body. Direct action. (Mach.) See Direct-acting. -- Direct discourse (Gram.), the language of any one quoted without change in its form; as, he said "I can not come;" -- correlative to indirect discourse, in which there is change of form; as, he said that he could not come. They are often c…