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Catarrhal. [R.]

Checking evacutions through astringent or styptic qualities.

That part of a speech, usually the exordium, in which the orator sets forth the subject matter to be discussed.

A placing among the stars; a catalogue of stars. The catasterisms of Eratosthenes. Whewell.

a calamitous or disastrous nature; hence, sudden calamity; great misfortune. The strange catastrophe of affairs now at London. Bp. Buret. The most horrible and portentous catastrophe that nature ever yet saw. Woodward.

Of a pertaining to a catastrophe. B. Powell.

The doctrine that the geological changes in the earth's crust have been caused by the sudden action of violent physical causes; -- opposed to the doctrine of uniformism.

One who holds the theory or catastrophism.

A light-colored, sprightly American wine from the Catawba grape.

; sing. Catawba. (Ethnol.) An appalachian tribe of Indians which originally inhabited the regions near the Catawba river and the head waters of the Santee.

Not defective; complete; as, an acatalectic verse. -- n.

Incomprehensibility of things; the doctrine held by the ancient Skeptic philosophers, that human knowledge never amounts to certainty, but only to probability.

Incapable of being comprehended; incomprehensible.

Efficacious against catarrh. -- n.

A division of Hydroidea in which the zooids are naked, or not inclosed in a capsule. See Tubularian.

Self-catalysis; catalysis of a substance by one of its own products, as of silver oxide by the silver formed by reduction of a small portion of it. -- Au`to*cat`a*lyt"ic (#), a.

A verse wanting two syllables at its termination.

Having a syllable or two beyond measure; as, a hypercatalectic verse.

A hit or thrust. [Obs.] B. Jonson.

A curve in the form of the figure 8, with both parts symmetrical, generated by the point in which a tangent to an equilateral hyperbola meets the perpendicular on it drawn from the center.