Search the Dictionary

To make unreal; to idealize. His fancy . . . unrealizes everything at a touch. Lowell.

n a series of small card cylinders, arranged around a carding drum; -- so called from its fancied resemblance to the hedgehog. Knight. Urchin fish (Zoöl.), a diodon.

achments; to be, or act as, a usurper. The parish churches on which the Presbyterians and fanatics had usurped. Evelyn. And now the Spirits of the Mind Are busy with poor Peter Bell; Upon the rights of visual sense Usurping, with a prevalence More terrible than magic spell. Wordsworth.

Of or pertaining to Utopia; resembling Utopia; hence, ideal; chimerical; fanciful; founded upon, or involving, imaginary perfections; as, Utopian projects; Utopian happiness.

Hence, a wandering of the thoughts; a wild or fanciful freak; a whim; a whimsical purpose. "The vagaries of a child." Spectator. They changed their minds, Flew off, and into strange vagaries fell. Milton.

ndefinite; ambiguous; as, a vague idea; a vague proposition. This faith is neither a mere fantasy of future glory, nor a vague ebullition of feeling. I. Taylor. The poet turned away, and gave himself up to a sort of vague revery, which he called thought. Hawthorne.

att. xv. 9. -- To take the name of God in vain, to use the name of God with levity or profaneness.

A fan or other contrivance, as a sieve, for winnowing grain.

eathercock. It is usually a plate or strip of metal, or slip of wood, often cut into some fanciful form, and placed upon a perpendicular axis around which it moves freely. Aye undiscreet, and changing as a vane. Chaucer.

Something unsubstantial, fleeting, or transitory; unreal fancy; vain imagination; idle talk; boasting. For what is your life It is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. James iv. 14.

Repetition of a theme or melody with fanciful embellishments or modifications, in time, tune, or harmony, or sometimes change of key; the presentation of a musical thought in new and varied aspects, yet so that the essential features of the original shall still preserve their identity.

To embellish; to change fancifully; to present under new aspects, as of form, key, measure, etc. See Variation, 4.

To throw a veil over; to cover with a veil. Her face was veiled; yet to my fancied sight, Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined. Milton.

ogeny; a venomous writer. Venomous snake (Zoöl.), any serpent which has poison glands and fangs, whether dangerous to man or not. These serpents constitute two tribes, the viperine serpents, or Solenoglypha, and the cobralike serpents, or Proteroglypha. The former have perforated, erectile fangs situated in the front p…

To winnow; to fan; as, to ventilate wheat.

The act of fanning, or winnowing, for the purpose of separating chaff and dust from the grain.

of similar spines covering the body of the shell. Called also Venus's shell. -- Venus's fan (Zoöl.), a common reticulated, fanshaped gorgonia (Gorgonia flabellum) native of Florida and the West Indies. When fresh the color is purple or yellow, or a mixture of the two. -- Venus's flytrap. (Bot.) See Flytrap, 2. -- V…

ment of organs as to be capable of living; -- said of a newborn, or a prematurely born, infant.

Having peculiar views; fanciful; visionary; unpractical; as, a viewy person.

fermenting vegetable substances; -- called also vinegar worm. -- Vinegar lamp (Chem.), a fanciful name of an apparatus designed to oxidize alcohol to acetic acid by means of platinum. -- Vinegar plant. See 4th Mother. -- Vinegar tree (Bot.), the stag-horn sumac (Rhus typhina), whose acid berries have been used to in…