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, or designating, a verb which forms its preterit (imperfect) by a variation in the root vowel, and the past participle (usually) by the addition of -en (with or without a change of the root vowel); as in the verbs strive, strove, striven; break, broke, broken; drink, drank, drunk. Opposed to weak, or regular. See Weak…

l by being pressed or packed into. With inward arms the dire machine they load, And iron bowels stuff the dark abode. Dryden.

A contraction of Studding sail. With every rag set, stunsails, sky scrapers and all. Lowell.

guishing, a speech element consisting of tone, or proper vocal sound, not pure as in the vowels, but dimmed and otherwise modified by some kind of obstruction in the oral or the nasal passage, and in some cases with a mixture of breath sound; -- a term introduced by Dr. James Rush in 1833. See Guide to Pronunciation, §…

Submissive; yielding. [R.] Howell.

extent not enjoined, or not required, by duty or necessity; as, supererogatory services. Howell.

To conceive (another fetus) after a former conception. [Obs.] Howell.

Serving no purpose; superfluous; needless. [Obs.] Howell.

The act of sustaining; maintenance; support. Milton. Lowell.

A whispering; a soft murmur. "Soft susurrations of the trees." Howell.

To syllabify. Howell.

pulse of the voice, and constituting a word or a part of a word. In other terms, it is a vowel or a diphtong, either by itself or flanked by one or more consonants, the whole produced by a single impulse or utterance. One of the liquids, l, m, n, may fill the place of a vowel in a syllable. Adjoining syllables in a wor…

h symbolize in this, that they love to look upon themselves through multiplying glasses. Howell.

The union, or drawing together into one syllable, of two vowels that are ordinarily separated in syllabification; synecphonesis; -- the opposite of diæresis.

A contraction of syllables by suppressing some vowel or diphthong at the end of a word, before another vowel or diphthong; as, th' army, for the army. [Written also synaloepha.]

A kind of customary payment by a tenant; -- a word used in old records. Cowell. Burrill.

merly appointed to receive moneys due to the king and to pay moneys payable by the king. Cowell.

Dryden. He assigns supremacy to the pope in spirituals, and to the emperor or temporals. Lowell.

A piece of carved work placed under each end of the taffrail. J. Knowels. In term, in set terms; in formal phrase. [Obs.] I can not speak in term. Chaucer. -- Term fee (Law) (a), a fee by the term, chargeable to a suitor, or by law fixed and taxable in the costs of a cause for each or any term it is in court. -- Terms…

In Old English, the article the, when the following word began with a vowel, was often written with elision as if a part of the word. Thus in Chaucer, the forms thabsence, tharray, thegle, thend, thingot, etc., are found for the absence, the array, the eagle, the end, etc.