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to receive or accept; to treat with contempt. What safe and nicely I might well delay By rule of knighthood, I disdain and spurn. Shak. Domestics will pay a more cheerful service when they find themselves not spurned because fortune has laid them at their master's feet. Locke.

Hence, a pattern or rule. [Obs.]

A square; a measure; a rule. [Obs.] "With golden squire." Spenser.

That which is established by authority as a rule for the measure of quantity, extent, value, or quality; esp., the original specimen weight or measure sanctioned by government, as the standard pound, gallon, or yard.

existing; permanent; not temporary; as, a standing army; legislative bodies have standing rules of proceeding and standing committees.

one government, whatever may be the form of the government; a nation. Municipal law is a rule of conduct prescribed by the supreme power in a state. Blackstone. The Puritans in the reign of Mary, driven from their homes, sought an asylum in Geneva, where they found a state without a king, and a church without a bishop…

An act of a corporation or of its founder, intended as a permanent rule or law; as, the statutes of a university.

short (Mil.), to diminish the length or rapidity of the step according to the established rules.

Made or done according to the rules of stereography; delineated on a plane; as, a stereographic chart of the earth. Stereographic projection (Geom.), a method of representing the sphere in which the center of projection is taken in the surface of the sphere, and the plane upon which the projection is made is at right a…

The stem or branch in which a graft is inserted. The scion overruleth the stock quite. Bacon.

Governed or governing by exact rules; observing exact rules; severe; rigorous; as, very strict in observing the Sabbath. "Through the strict senteries." Milton.

Binding strongly; making strict requirements; restrictive; rigid; severe; as, stringent rules. They must be subject to a sharper penal code, and to a more stringent code of procedure. Macaulay. -- Strin"gent*ly, adv. -- Strin"gent*ness, n.

Specifically: One who is under the authority of a ruler and is governed by his laws; one who owes allegiance to a sovereign or a sovereign state; as, a subject of Queen Victoria; a British subject; a subject of the United States. Was never subject longed to be a king, As I do long and wish to be a subject. Shak. The su…

e sublime and insolent." Spenser. His fair, large front and eye sublime declared Absolute rule. Milton.

To be subservient or subordinate; to serve in an inferior capacity. Not made to rule, But to subserve where wisdom bears command. Milton.

y; especially, aiding in an inferior position or capacity; as, a subsidiary stream. Chief ruler and principal head everywhere, not suffragant and subsidiary. Florio. They constituted a useful subsidiary testimony of another state of existence. Coleridge.

s the minor clause or premise of a syllogism. But whether you see cause to go against the rule, or the subsumption under the rule. De Quincey.

A series of persons or things according to some established rule of precedence; as, a succession of kings, or of bishops; a succession of events in chronology. He was in the succession to an earldom. Macaulay.

A ruler, or sovereign, of a Mohammedan state; specifically, the ruler of the Turks; the Padishah, or Grand Seignior; -- officially so called. Sultan flower. (Bot.) See Sweet sultan, under Sweet.

The rule or dominion of a sultan; sultanship.