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The cause of great harm, evil, or misfortune; that which brings evil or severe affliction; torment. The common curse of mankind, folly and ignorance. Shak. All that I eat, or drink, or shall beget, Is propagated curse. Milton. The curse of Scotland (Card Playing), the nine of diamonds. -- Not worth a curse. See under…

liberty; confinement; imprisonment. What pease will be given To us enslaved, but custody severe, And stripes and arbitrary punishment Milton.

hes. (b) To damage or destroy; to injure; to wound; as, to cut up a book or its author by severe criticism. "This doctrine cuts up all government by the roots." Locke. (c) To afflict; to discourage; to demoralize; as, the death of his friend cut him up terribly. [Colloq.] Thackeray.

Severe; sarcastic; biting; as, a cutting reply.

ts connected with the exploits of the hero or heroes of some particular period which have severed as a popular theme for poetry, as the legend aof Arthur and the knights of the Round Table, and that of Charlemagne and his paladins.

Prohibition; a prohibitory ordinance. [Obs.] Severe defenses . . . against wearing any linen under a certain breadth. Sir W. Temple.

A specific epidemic disease attended with high fever, cutaneous eruption, and severe pains in the head and limbs, resembling those of rheumatism; -- called also breakbone fever. It occurs in India, Egypt, the West Indies, etc., is of short duration, and rarely fatal.

Characterized by or containing a denunciation; minatory; accusing; threatening; as, severe and denunciatory language.

ty of fluid in the vessels by bloodletting or otherwise; also excessive evacuation, as in severe diarrhea.

sent as of little value or claim to esteem; to undervalue. Addison. Which . . . some over-severe phoilosophers may look upon fastidiously, or undervalue and depreciate. Cudworth. To prove that the Americans ought not to be free, we are obliged to depreciate the value of freedom itself. Burke.

erogatory from the power of subsequent Parliaments bind not. Blackstone. His language was severely censured by some of his brother peers as derogatory to their other. Macaulay. Derogatory clause in a testament (Law), a sentence of secret character inserted by the testator alone, of which he reserves the knowledge to hi…

Severed from the appropriation or possession of a spiritual corporation. The appropriation may be severed, and the church become disappropriate, two ways. Blackstone.

Severe training, corrective of faults; instruction by means of misfortune, suffering, punishment, etc. A sharp discipline of half a century had sufficed to educate Macaulay.

To be separated or severed; to part. Thyself shalt discontinue from thine heritage. Jer. xvii. 4.

Rent off; torn asunder; severed; disrupted.

o; to sever thoroughly; to sunder; to disunite; to separate; to disperse. The storm so dissevered the company . . . that most of therm never met again. Sir P. Sidney. States disserved, discordant, belligerent. D. Webster.

. Draconian code, or Draconian laws, a code of laws made by Draco. Their measures were so severe that they were said to be written in letters of blood; hence, any laws of excessive rigor.

The severe persecution of French Protestants under Louis XIV., by an armed force, usually of dragoons; hence, a rapid and devastating incursion; dragoonade. He learnt it as he watched the dragonnades, the tortures, the massacres of the Netherlands. C. Kingsley.

exercise, physical or mental, enforced with regularity and by constant repetition; as, a severe drill in Latin grammar.

Characterized by a quality somewhat severe, grave, or hard; hence, sharp; keen; shrewd; quaint; as, a dry tone or manner; dry wit. He was rather a dry, shrewd kind of body. W. Irving.