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A piece of wood set between two studs, posts, etc., to stiffen and support them.

The moving moral, as well as physical, forces of any kind, or the laws which relate to them.

r breeding freely; infertility; a form homogenesis in which the hybrids are sterile among themselves, but are fertile with members of either parent race.

her of safety. Burke. The doorsteps and threshold with the early grass springing up about them. Hawthorne.

s earmark. Robynson (More's Utopia). A set of intellectual ideas . . . have earmarks upon them, no tokens of a particular proprietor. Burrow.

To use in earnest. [R.] To earnest them [our arms] with men. Pastor Fido (1602).

the Eastern Roman Empire and the countries converted to Christianity by missionaries from them. Its full official title is The Orthodox Catholic Apostolic Eastern Church. It became estranged from the Western, or Roman, Church over the question of papal supremacy and the doctrine of the filioque, and a separation, begun…

Fig.: Sympathetic recognition; response; answer. Fame is the echo of actions, resounding them. Fuller. Many kind, and sincere speeches found an echo in his heart. R. L. Stevenson.

Flexible wood worked into the top of hedge stakes, to bind them together. [Obs.] Tusser.

Death and persecution lose all the ill that they can have, if we do not set an edge upon them by our fears and by our vices. Jer. Taylor.

educing good from ill. Pope. They want to educe and cultivate what is best and noblest in themselves. M. Arnold.

effective men in a regiment. They are not effective of anything, nor leave no work behind them. Bacon. Whosoever is an effective, real cause of doing his heighbor wrong, is criminal. Jer. Taylor.

developed or executed with care and in minute detail; as, the carefully elaborated theme. Syn. -- detailed, elaborate. [WordNet 1.5]

on or state who are entitled to vote in an election, or any distinct class or division of them. The middle-class electorate of Great Britain. M. Arnold.

An operation that consists in inserting needless in the part affected, and connecting them with the poles of a galvanic apparatus.

lk who often find these objects of prehistoric make in the fields and formerly attributed them to fairies; -- called also elf bolt, elf dart, and elf shot. -- Elf child, a child supposed to be left by elves, in room of one they had stolen. See Changeling. -- Elf fire, the ignis fatuus. Brewer. -- Elf owl (Zoöl.), a…

her married or unmarried, who runs away with a paramour or a sweetheart. Great numbers of them [the women] have eloped from their allegiance. Addison.

, Leyden, etc., from about 1592 to 1680; also, applied to a round open type introduced by them. The Elzevir editions are valued for their neatness, and the elegant small types used. Brande & C.

say; disconcertedness. The embarrassment which inexperienced minds have often to express themselves upon paper. W. Irving. The embarrassments tom commerce growing out of the late regulations. Bancroft.

t by a clerk of his employer's; embezzlement of public funds by the public officer having them in charge.