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said of a building. If the bishop, parson, or vicar, etc., dilapidates the buildings, or cuts down the timber of the patrimony. Blackstone.

Prosecuted with careful attention and effort; careful; painstaking; not careless or negligent. The judges shall make diligent inquisition. Deut. xix. 18.

nsion lumber, Dimension scantling, or Dimension stock (Carp.), lumber for building, etc., cut to the sizes usually in demand, or to special sizes as ordered. -- Dimension stone, stone delivered from the quarry rough, but brought to such sizes as are requisite for cutting to dimensions given.

for drawing the spiral curve of the volute. Gwilt. -- Diminishing rule (Arch.), a board cut with a concave edge, for fixing the entasis and curvature of a shaft. -- Diminishing stile (Arch.), a stile which is narrower in one part than in another, as in many glazed doors.

g (often periodic) for drink, esp. for alcoholic liquors; also improperly used to denote acute and chronic alcoholism.

Without circumlocution or ambiguity; absolutely; in express terms. No man hath hitherto been so impious as plainly and directly to condemn prayer. Hooker.

A body of directors; board of management; especially, a committee which held executive power in France under the first republic.

; to deny the force or validity of; to disown and reject; as, the judge disallowed the executor's charge. To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God. 1 Pet. ii. 4. That the edicts of Cæsar we may at all times disallow, but the statutes of God for no reason we may reject. Milton.…

Unprepared; unequipped. [Obs.] Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin, Unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled. Shak.

uths, a young man void of understanding. Prov. vii. 7. Our unassisted sight . . . is not acute enough to discern the minute texture of visible objects. Beattie. I wake, and I discern the truth. Tennyson.

Acute; shrewd; sagacious; sharp-sighted. Macaulay.

In a discerning manner; with judgment; judiciously; acutely. Garth.

objects, and their relations and tendencies; penetrative and discriminate mental vision; acuteness; sagacity; insight; as, the errors of youth often proceed from the want of discernment.

discourages; that which deters, or tends to deter, from an undertaking, or from the prosecution of anything; a determent; as, the revolution was commenced under every possible discouragement. "Discouragements from vice." Swift.

Consecutive speech, either written or unwritten, on a given line of thought; speech; treatise; dissertation; sermon, etc.; as, the preacher gave us a long discourse on duty.

Containing dialogue or conversation; interlocutory. The epic is everywhere interlaced with dialogue or discoursive scenes. Dryden.

The quality of being discriminating; faculty of nicely distinguishing; acute discernment; as, to show great discrimination in the choice of means.

A medicine that discusses or disperses morbid humors; a discutient.

To disinherit; to cut off, or detain, from the possession or enjoyment of an inheritance. [Obs.] Spenser.

To cut off from an inheritance or from hereditary succession; to prevent, as an heir, from coming into possession of any property or right, which, by law or custom, would devolve on him in the course of descent. Of how fair a portion Adam disinherited his whole posterity! South.