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The common wormwood (Artemisia absinthium), an intensely bitter plant, used as a tonic and for making the oil of wormwood.

ation or condition; uncontrolled; unrestricted; unconditional; as, absolute authority, monarchy, sovereignty, an absolute promise or command; absolute power; an absolute monarch.

An acquittal, or sentence of a judge declaring and accused person innocent. [Obs.]

solute; the system or doctrine of the absolute; the principles or practice of absolute or arbitrary government; despotism. The element of absolutism and prelacy was controlling. Palfrey.

Of or pertaining to absolutism; arbitrary; despotic; as, absolutist principles.

To swallow up; to engulf; to overwhelm; to cause to disappear as if by swallowing up; to use up; to include. "Dark oblivion soon absorbs them all." Cowper. The large cities absorb the wealth and fashion. W. Irving.

Absorbing; swallowing; absorptive. Absorbent ground (Paint.), a ground prepared for a picture, chiefly with distemper, or water colors, by which the oil is absorbed, and a brilliancy is imparted to the colors.

Absorbed. [Arcahic.] "Absorpt in care." Pope.

t or process of absorbing or sucking in anything, or of being absorbed and made to disappear; as, the absorption of bodies in a whirlpool, the absorption of a smaller tribe into a larger.

Sparing in diet; refraining from a free use of food and strong drinks; temperate; abstinent; sparing in the indulgence of the appetite or passions. Instances of longevity are chiefly among the abstemious. Arbuthnot.

Withdraw; separate. [Obs.] The more abstract . . . we are from the body. Norris.

Fully sufficient; plentiful; in copious supply; -- followed by in, rarely by with. "Abundant in goodness and truth." Exod. xxxiv. 6. Abundant number (Math.), a number, the sum of whose aliquot parts exceeds the number itself. Thus, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, the aliquot parts of 12, make the number 16. This is opposed to a deficie…

Wrongly used; perverted; misapplied. I am . . . necessitated to use the word Parliament improperly, according to the abusive acceptation thereof. Fuller.

A genus of leguminous trees and shrubs. Nearly 300 species are Australian or Polynesian, and have terete or vertically compressed leaf stalks, instead of the bipinnate leaves of the much fewer species of America, Africa, etc. Very few are found in temperate climates.

Gum arabic.

The articles of dress prescribed and worn at some colleges and universities.

A member of an academy, or society for promoting science, art, or literature, as of the French Academy, or the Royal Academy of arts.

A garden or grove near Athens (so named from the hero Academus), where Plato and his followers held their philosophical conferences; hence, the school of philosophy of which Plato was head.

Armed with prickles, as a plant.

A group of intestinal worms, having the proboscis armed with recurved spines.