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nd buildings owned by the head of a family, and occupied by him and his family. Homestead law. (a) A law conferring special privileges or exemptions upon owners of homesteads; esp., a law exempting a homestead from attachment or sale under execution for general debts. Such laws, with limitations as to the extent or val…

blic land with the purpose of acquiring ownership of it under provisions of the homestead law, so called; one who has acquired a homestead in this manner. [Local, U.S.]

verbal promise, or by betting or gambling, considered more binding than if recoverable by law. -- Honor bright! An assurance of truth or fidelity. [Colloq.] -- Honor court (Feudal Law), one held in an honor or seignory. -- Honor point. (Her.) See Escutcheon. -- Honors of war (Mil.), distinctions granted to a vanquis…

An honorary payment, usually in recognition of services for which it is not usual or not lawful to assign a fixed business price. Heumann.

A young rowdy; a rough, lawless fellow. [Colloq. U.S.]

moon when increasing, or in the form of a crescent. J. Gregory. Letters of horning (Scots Law), the process or authority by which a person, directed by the decree of a court of justice to pay or perform anything, is ordered to comply therewith. Mozley & W.

tent, number or amount; in what proportion; by what measure or quality. O, how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day. Ps. cxix. 97. By how much they would diminish the present extent of the sea, so much they would impair the fertility, and fountains, and rivers of the earth. Bentley.

A shouting or vociferation. Hue and cry (Law), a loud outcry with which felons were anciently pursued, and which all who heard it were obliged to take up, joining in the pursuit till the malefactor was taken; in later usage, a written proclamation issued on the escape of a felon from prison, requiring all persons to ai…

To become or be made more humane; to become civilized; to be ameliorated. By the original law of nations, war and extirpation were the punishment of injury. Humanizing by degrees, it admitted slavery instead of death; a further step was the exchange of prisoners instead of slavery. Franklin.

ination of weight, containing 100, 112, or 120 pounds avoirdupois, according to differing laws or customs. By the legal standard of England it is 112 pounds. In most of the United States, both in practice and by law, it is 100 pounds avoirdupois, the corresponding ton of 2,000 pounds, sometimes called the short ton, be…

a man who has a wife; -- the correlative to wife. The husband and wife are one person in law. Blackstone.

ne certain classes of suits for the recovery of lands within the city. In the progress of law reform this court has become unimportant. Mozley & W.

science of mechanics which relates to fluids, or, as usually limited, which treats of the laws of motion and action of nonelastic fluids, whether as investigated mathematically, or by observation and experiment; the principles of dynamics, as applied to water and other fluids.

That branch of physics which treats of the mechanics of liquids, or of their laws of equilibrium and of motion.

of water, however small, may be made to counterbalance any weight, however great; or the law of the equality of pressure of fluids in all directions. -- Hydrostatic press, a machine in which great force, with slow motion, is communicated to a large plunger by means of water forced into the cylinder in which it moves,…

- Hyperbolic logarithm. See Logarithm. -- Hyperbolic spiral (Math.), a spiral curve, the law of which is, that the distance from the pole to the generating point varies inversely as the angle swept over by the radius vector.

Above or transcending physical laws; supernatural. Those who do not fly to some hyperphysical hypothesis. Sir W. Hamilton.

sting being; to hypostatize. [R.] The pressed Newtonians . . . refused to hypostasize the law of gravitation into an ether. Coleridge.

n the thing, or jus in re. Pothier. B. R. Curtis. There are but few cases, if any, in our law, where an hypothecation, in the strict sense of the Roman law, exists; that is a pledge without possession by the pledgee. Story.

hool of physicians in Italy, about the middle of the 17th century, who tried to apply the laws of mechanics and mathematics to the human body, and hence were eager student of anatomy; -- opposed to the iatrochemists.