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A falling, flowing, or rushing downward with violence and rapidity. The hurry, precipitation, and rapid motion of the water, returning . . . towards the sea. Woodward.

Headlong; as, precipitous fall.

d before the proper or usual time; adopted too soon; too early; untimely; as, a premature fall of snow; a premature birth; a premature opinion; premature decay.

To oppress; to bear hard upon. Press not a falling man too far. Shak.

o incite; to urge on; -- sometimes with on, or off. Who pricketh his blind horse over the fallows. Chaucer. The season pricketh every gentle heart. Chaucer. My duty pricks me on to utter that. Shak.

A falling down; a prolapsus. [R.] Parr.

Falling from its proper place.

silver among them in reproach. Robynson (More's Utopia) . Proceed, Solinus, to procure my fall. Shak.

of a plane, the straight line of the plane connecting the feet of the perpendiculars let fall from the extremities of the given line.

The falling down of a part through the orifice with which it is naturally connected, especially of the uterus or the rectum. Dunglison.

To support, or prevent from falling, by placing something under or against; as, to prop up a fence or an old building; (Fig.) to sustain; to maintain; as, to prop a declining state. Shak. Till the bright mountains prop the incumbent sky. Pope. For being not propp'd by ancestry. Shak. I prop myself upon those few suppor…

inclined or disposed; to incline; to tend. [R.] Shak. We shall propend to it, as a stone falleth down. Barrow.

Lying in a humble, lowly, or suppliant posture. Prostrate fall Before him reverent, and there confess Humbly our faults. Milton.

The act of falling down, or of bowing in humility or adoration; primarily, the act of falling on the face, but usually applied to kneeling or bowing in reverence and worship. A greater prostration of reason than of body. Shak.

several species of beetles whose larvæ gnaw the branches of trees so as to cause them to fall, especially the American oak pruner (Asemum moestum), whose larva eats the pith of oak branches, and when mature gnaws a circular furrow on the inside nearly to the bark. When the branches fall each contains a pupa.…

The doctrine that the soul falls asleep at death, and does not wake until the resurrection of the body. -- Psy`cho*pan"ny*chism, n.

riar Rush, Pug, etc. Shak. He meeteth Puck, whom most men call Hobgoblin, and on him doth fall. Drayton.

To become reduced to powder; to fall to dust; as, the stone pulverizes easily.

To kick (the ball) before it touches the ground, when let fall from the hands.

obstructions. Swift o'er the rolling pebbles, down the hills, Louder and louder purl the falling rills. Pope.