Search the Dictionary

Same as Hastate. Gray.

ire to thwart and injure; occupied by an enemy or enemies; inimical; unfriendly; as, a hostile force; hostile intentions; a hostile country; hostile to a sudden change.

In a hostile manner.

Not ductile; incapable of being drawn into threads, as a metal; inelastic; tough.

infancy, or to an infant; similar to, or characteristic of, an infant; childish; as, infantile behavior.

An acute disease, almost exclusively infantile, characterized by inflammation of the anterior horns of the gray substance of the spinal cord. It is attended with febrile symptoms, motor paralysis, and muscular atrophy, often producing permanent deformities. Called also acute anterior poliomyelitis.

Not fertile; not productive; barren; sterile; as, an infertile soil.

In an infertile manner.

Pertaining to, or having the nature of, insects. Bacon.

Not tractile; incapable of being drawn out or extended. Bacon.

Useless; unprofitable. [Obs.] Bacon.

Not retractile.

and selling of commodities; commercial. The expedition of the Argonauts was partly mercantile, partly military. Arbuthnot. Mercantile agency, an agency for procuring information of the standing and credit of merchants in different parts of the country, for the use of dealers who sell to them. -- Mercantile marine, th…

Having powers of self-motion, though unconscious; as, the motile spores of certain seaweeds.

Same as Octant, 2. [R.]

Excessively subtile.

A roofing tile, of peculiar form, having a transverse section resembling an elongated S laid on its side (

See Pantile.

e, any contagious or infectious epidemic disease that is virulent and devastating. The pestilence That walketh in darkness. Ps. xci. 6.

Pestilential; noxious; pernicious; mischievous. "Corrupt and pestilent." Milton. "What a pestilent knave is this same!" Shak.