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Smallness; meagerness; slenderness; fineness, thinness. [R.] Paley.

passed. Coleridge. When the consuls . . . came in . . . they knew soon by experience how slenderly guarded against danger the majesty of rulers is where force is wanting. Holland. Those that undertook the religion of our Savior upon his preaching, had no experience of it. Sharp.

To make thin or slender; to draw out so as to lessen the thickness. His body behind the head becomes broad, from whence it is again extenuated all the way to the tail. Grew.

The act of axtenuating or the state of being extenuated; the act of making thin, slender, or lean, or of palliating; diminishing, or lessening; palliation, as of a crime; mitigation, as of punishment. To listen . . . to every extenuation of what is evil. I. Taylor.

il to Texas. It is reddish yellow and about the size of the domestic cat, but with a more slender body and shorter legs.

Any fine, slender thread, or threadlike substance; as, a fiber of spun glass; especially, one of the slender rootlets of a plant.

A small fiber; the branch of a fiber; a very slender thread; a fibrilla. Cheyne.

A genus of small, slender fishes, remarkable for their habit of living as commensals in other animals. One species inhabits the gill cavity of the pearl oyster near Panama; another lives within an East Indian holothurian.

A genus of slender, nematode worms of many species, parasitic in various animals. See Guinea worm.

rung upon, a thread; -- said of tuberous swellings in the middle or at the extremities of slender, threadlike rootlets.

A slender thread, as that of a cobweb. Her whip of cricket's bone, the lash of film. Shak.

A hairlike feather; a father with a slender scape and without a web in most or all of its length.

Not thick or heavy; slender; filmy; as, a fine thread.

(Bot.), the foxglove. -- Finger grass (Bot.), a kind of grass (Panicum sanguinale) with slender radiating spikes; common crab grass. See Crab grass, under Crab. -- Finger nut, a fly nut or thumb nut. -- Finger plate, a strip of metal, glass, etc., to protect a painted or polished door from finger marks. -- Finger…

ing net, drag net, landing net, seine, shrimping net, trawl, etc. -- Fishing rod, a long slender rod, to which is attached the line for angling. -- Fishing smack, a sloop or other small vessel used in sea fishing. -- Fishing tackle, apparatus used in fishing, as hook, line, rod, etc. -- Fishing tube (Micros.), a gl…

Shaped like a whiplash; long, slender, round, flexible, and (comming) tapering.

A young, flexible shoot of a plant; esp., the long trailing branch of a vine, or a slender branch in certain mosses.

A plant of the genus Linum, esp. the L. usitatissimum, which has a single, slender stalk, about a foot and a half high, with blue flowers. The fiber of the bark is used for making thread and cloth, called linen, cambric, lawn, lace, etc. Linseed oil is expressed from the seed.

The slender styles of the pistillate flowers of maize; also called silk.

onanthus virginica), of the southern United States, having clusters of white flowers with slender petals. It is often cultivated.