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Receiving or enduring without either active sympathy or active resistance; without emotion or excitement; patient; not opposing; unresisting; as, passive obedience; passive submission. The best virtue, passive fortitude. Massinger.

The tendency of a body to remain in a given state, either of motion or rest, till disturbed by another body; inertia. Cheyne.

Of, pertaining to, or designating, emotion or suffering. [R.] Chalmers.

Affecting or moving the tender emotions, esp. pity or grief; full of pathos; as, a pathetic song or story. "Pathetic action." Macaulay. No theory of the passions can teach a man to be pathetic. E. Porter. Pathetic muscle (Anat.), the superior oblique muscle of the eye. -- Pathetic nerve (Anat.), the fourth cranial, or…

That quality or property of anything which touches the feelings or excites emotions and passions, esp., that which awakens tender emotions, such as pity, sorrow, and the like; contagious warmth of feeling, action, or expression; pathetic quality; as, the pathos of a picture, of a poem, or of a cry. The combination of i…

: To make smooth, easy, and safe; to prepare, as a path or way; as, to pave the way to promotion; to pave the way for an enterprise. It might open and pave a prepared way to his own title. Bacon.

or interdental spaces, on another part, as a ratchet wheel, in such a manner as to permit motion in one direction and prevent it in the reverse, as in a windlass; a catch, click, or detent. See Illust. of Ratchet Wheel. [Written also paul, or pall.] Pawl bitt (Naut.), a heavy timber, set abaft the windlass, to receive…

Possessing or enjoying peace; not disturbed by war, tumult, agitation, anxiety, or commotion; quiet; tranquil; as, a peaceful time; a peaceful country; a peaceful end.

distance passed over. It is usually in the form of a watch; an oscillating weight by the motion of the body causes the index to advance a certain distance at each step.

To hang; to depend. [R.] Pending upon certain powerful motions. I. Taylor.

or regular revolution; proceeding in a series of successive circuits; as, the periodical motion of the planets round the sun.

body, such as the wing of a bird or a gliding aëroplane, within which cyclic or vortical motion of the air occur.

Applied to the peculiar wormlike wave motion of the intestines and other similar structures, produced by the successive contraction of the muscular fibers of their walls, forcing their contents onwards; as, peristaltic movement. -- Per`i*stal"tic*al*ly, adv.

ch all the tithes are appropriated, and no vicarage is endowed. Blackstone. -- Perpetual motion. See under Motion. -- Perpetual screw. See Endless screw, under Screw.

perpetuity of laws. Bacon. A path to perpetuity of fame. Byron. The perpetuity of single emotion is insanity. I. Taylor.

The persistence of motion.

A disturbance in the regular elliptic or other motion of a heavenly body, produced by some force additional to that which causes its regular motion; as, the perturbations of the planets are caused by their attraction on each other. Newcomb.

The motion of a horse when, raising his fore quarters, he keeps his hind feet on the ground without advancing; rearing.

between the spectators and the instrument, and the figures are often made to appear as in motion, or to merge into one another.

Any one point or portion in a recurring series of changes, as in the changes of motion of one of the particles constituting a wave or vibration; one portion of a series of such changes, in distinction from a contrasted portion, as the portion on one side of a position of equilibrium, in contrast with that on the opposi…