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A passageway; an opening or entrance to an inclosed place; a gate; a door; a portal. [Archaic] Him I accuse The city ports by this hath entered. Shak. Form their ivory port the cherubim Forth issuing. Milton.

A door or gate; hence, a way of entrance or exit, especially one that is grand and imposing. Thick with sparkling orient gems The portal shone. Milton. From out the fiery portal of the east. Shak.

A grating of iron or of timbers pointed with iron, hung over the gateway of a fortress, to be let down to prevent the entrance of an enemy. "Let the portcullis fall." Sir W. Scott. She . . . the huge portcullis high updrew. Milton.

ourt; the government of the Turkish empire, officially called the Sublime Porte, from the gate (port) of the sultan's palace at which justice was administered.

Having gates. [Obs.] We took the sevenfold-ported Thebes. Chapman.

A man who has charge of a door or gate; a doorkeeper; one who waits at the door to receive messages. Shak. To him the porter openeth. John x. 3.

To interrogate; to question. [Obs.] "She . . . posed him and sifted him." Bacon.

ssed; that which any one occupies, owns, or controls; in the plural, property in the aggregate; wealth; dominion; as, foreign possessions. When the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. Matt. xix. 22. Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold a possession. Acts v. 1. The house o…

t of the houses. Ex. xii. 7. Then by main force pulled up, and on his shoulders bore, The gates of Azza, post and massy bar. Milton. Unto his order he was a noble post. Chaucer.

The race that proceeds from a progenitor; offspring to the furthest generation; the aggregate number of persons who are descended from an ancestor of a generation; descendants; -- contrasted with ancestry; as, the posterity of Abraham. If [the crown] should not stand in thy posterity. Shak.

Originally, a back door or gate; a private entrance; hence, any small door or gate. He by a privy postern took his flight. Spenser. Out at the postern, by the abbey wall. Shak.

person or his acts. "I praise well thy wit." Chaucer. Let her own works praise her in the gates. Prov. xxxi. 31. We praise not Hector, though his name, we know, Is great in arms; 't is hard to praise a foe. Dryden.

A pale green mineral occurring in crystalline aggregates having a botryoidal or mammillary structure, and rarely in distinct crystals. It is a hydrous silicate of alumina and lime.

ards, instituted by the Emperor Augustus in nine cohorts of 1,000 men each. -- Pretorian gate (Rom. Antiq.), that one of the four gates in a camp which lay next the enemy. Brande & C.

Proof. [Obs.] Spenser. Lydgate.

Prob`lem*at"ic*al*ly, adv. Diligent inquiries into remote and problematical guilt leave a gate wide open to . . . informers. Swift.

make known by public announcement; to give wide publicity to; to publish abroad; to promulgate; to declare; as, to proclaim war or peace. To proclaim liberty to the captives. Isa. lxi. 1. For the apparel oft proclaims the man. Shak. Throughout the host proclaim A solemn council forthwith to be held. Milton.…

young, or as a natural product or growth; to give birth to; to bear; to generate; to propagate; to yield; to furnish; as, the earth produces grass; trees produce fruit; the clouds produce rain. This soil produces all sorts of palm trees. Sandys. [They] produce prodigious births of body or mind. Milton. The greatest jur…

The quality of state of being profligate; a profligate or very vicious course of life; a state of being abandoned in moral principle and in vice; dissoluteness.

To hinder; to debar; to prevent; to preclude. Gates of burning adamant, Barred over us, prohibit all egress. Milton.