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A secret abuse in the exercise of a public office.

One who betrays or abuses a trust. Prynne.

The act of treating with abuse or disrespect, or with undue publicity, or lack of delicacy. 'T were profanation of our joys To tell the laity our love. Donne.

To violate, as anything sacred; to treat with abuse, irreverence, obloquy, or contempt; to desecrate; to pollute; as, to profane the name of God; to profane the Scriptures, or the ordinance of God. The priests in the temple profane the sabbath. Matt. xii. 5.

To expiate by a fine or forfeit. [Obs.] Not tears nor prayers shall purchase out abuses. Shak.

One legally empowered to make quest of certain matters, esp. of abuses of weights and measures. Specifically:

olitics or social reform. Radicalism means root work; the uprooting of all falsehoods and abuses. F. W. Robertson.

ct from a wrong, erroneous, or false state; to amend; as, to rectify errors, mistakes, or abuses; to rectify the will, the judgment, opinions; to rectify disorders. I meant to rectify my conscience. Shak. This was an error of opinion which a conflicting opinion would have rectified. Burke.

icious or corrupt; as, the reformation of manners; reformation of the age; reformation of abuses. Satire lashes vice into reformation. Dryden.

tion or amendment; one who labors for, or urges, reform; as, a reformer of manners, or of abuses.

To address or abuse with opprobrious and contemptuous language; to reproach. "And did not she herself revile me there" Shak. Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again. 1 Pet. ii. 23.

The act of reviling; also, contemptuous language; reproach; abuse. Spenser.

Reproach; abuse; vilification. Neither be ye afraid of their revilings. Isa. li. 7.

the order of the months was changed so that January should come before February. Through abuse of power by the pontiffs to whose care it was committed, this calendar fell into confusion. It was replaced by the Julian calendar. In designating the days of the month, the Romans reckoned backward from three fixed points,…

b) To talk incessantly. (c) To continue a course. (d) To press with jokes or ridicule; to abuse with sarcasm; to bear hard on. (e) (Print.) To be continued in the same lines, without making a break or beginning a new paragraph. -- To run out. (a) To come to an end; to expire; as, the lease runs out Michaelmas. (b) To…

That which is scurrile or scurrilous; gross or obscene language; low buffoonery; vulgar abuse. Interrupting prayers and sermons with clamor and scurrility. Macaulay.

Containing low indecency or abuse; mean; foul; vile; obscenely jocular; as, scurrilous language. The absurd and scurrilous sermon which had very unwisely been honored with impeachment. Macaulay.

d and feelings; highly susceptible; easily and acutely affected. She was too sensitive to abuse and calumny. Macaulay.

address with slang or ribaldry; to insult with vulgar language. [Colloq.] Every gentleman abused by a cabman or slanged by a bargee was bound there and then to take off his coat and challenge him to fisticuffs. London Spectator.

To search narrowly; to scrutinize. It is my nature's plague To spy into abuses. Shak.