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Nice propriety of manners or conduct; susceptibility or tenderness of feeling; refinement; fastidiousness; and hence, in an exaggerated sense, effeminacy; as, great delicacy of behavior; delicacy in doing a kindness; delicacy of character that unfits for earnest action. You know your mother's delicacy in this point. Co…

That which is falsely or delusively believed or propagated; false belief; error in belief. And fondly mourned the dear delusion gone. Prior.

To deprive of magnetic properties. See Magnetize. If the bar be rapidly magnetized and demagnetized. A. Cyc.

which has not been granted out in tenancy; a house, and the land adjoining, kept for the proprietor's own use. [Written also demain.] Wharton's Law Dict. Burrill. Ancient demesne. (Eng. Law) See under Ancient.

assumed premises; -- these premises being definitions, axioms, and previously established propositions. Direct, or Positive, demonstration (Logic & Math.), one in which the correct conclusion is the immediate sequence of reasoning from axiomatic or established premises; -- opposed to Indirect, or Negative, demonstratio…

Denial of one's self, a declining of some gratification; restraint of one's appetites or propensities; self-denial.

Having power to denote; designating or marking off. Proper names are preëminently denotative; telling us that such as object has such a term to denote it, but telling us nothing as to any single attribute. Latham.

o act in his or its behalf; delegation; as, the general sent a deputation to the enemy to propose a truce. By deputation, or In deputation, by delegated authority; as substitute; through the medium of a deputy. [Obs.] Say to great Cæsar this: In deputation I kiss his conquering hand. Shak.

To put out of place, order, or rank; to disturb the proper arrangement or order of; to throw into disorder, confusion, or embarrassment; to disorder; to disarrange; as, to derange the plans of a commander, or the affairs of a nation.

A thing voluntary abandoned or willfully cast away by its proper owner, especially a ship abandoned at sea.

Final; serving to complete; conclusive. [Obs.] "Desitive propositions." I. Watts.

), a process of reasoning which involves the denial of the first of a series of dependent propositions as a consequence of the denial of the last; a species of reductio ad absurdum. Whately.

The faculty supposed to impel to the commission of acts of destruction; propensity to destroy.

ge; mischief; harm; diminution; loss; damage; -- used very generically; as, detriments to property, religion, morals, etc. I can repair That detriment, if such it be. Milton.

A prefix which formerly properly indicated the second in a regular series of compound in the series, and not to its composition, but which is now generally employed in the same sense as bi- or di-, although little used.

The act of giving or disposing of real estate by will; -- sometimes improperly applied to a bequest of personal estate.

having the property of turning the plane of polarized light to the right; as, dextrotartaric acid.

, wild dog (Canis Dukhunensis), found in the mountains of India. It is remarkable for its propensity to hunt the tiger and other wild animals in packs.

Pertaining to, or possessing the properties of, a species of caustic curves formed by refraction. See Caustic surface, under Caustic.

That branch of natural philosophy which treats of the properties of sound as affected by passing through different mediums; -- called also diaphonics. See the Note under Acoustics.