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, by means of sails; hence, to move or journey upon(the water) by means of steam or other force. A thousand ships were manned to sail the sea. Dryden.

Sacredness; solemnity; inviolability; religious binding force; as, the sanctity of an oath.

ntest, or battle. We may not propagate religion by wars, or by sanguinary persecutions to force consciences. Bacon.

Forced; unnatural; insincere; hence, derisive, mocking, malignant, or bitterly sarcastic; -- applied only to a laugh, smile, or some facial semblance of gayety. Where strained, sardonic smiles are glozing still, And grief is forced to laugh against her will. Sir H. Wotton. The scornful, ferocious, sardonic grin of a bl…

r so far as to give contentment with what is wished for. Death shall . . . with us two Be forced to satisfy his ravenous maw. Milton.

n instrument of torture invented by Sir W. Skevington, which so compressed the body as to force the blood to flow from nostrils. and sometimes from the hands and feet. Am. Cyc.

ge when it relates to the physical world and its phenomena, the nature, constitution, and forces of matter, the qualities and function of living tissues, etc.; -- called also natural science, and physical science. Voltaire hardly left a single corner of the field entirely unexplored in science, poetry, history, philoso…

ten with at; as, to scold at a servant. Pardon me, lords, 't is the first time ever I was forced to scold. Shak.

defense; a fort. No sconce or fortress of his raising was ever known either to have been forced, or yielded up, or quitted. Milton.

of extortion; to coerce. -- To put under the screw or screws, to subject to presure; to force. -- Wood screw, a metal screw with a sharp thread of coarse pitch, adapted to holding fast in wood. See Illust. of Wood screw, under Wood.

An instrument for measuring the direction, duration, and force of earthquakes and like concussions.

To take possession of by force. At last they seize The scepter, and regard not David's sons. Milton.

nation by one's self; or, determination of one's acts or states without the necessitating force of motives; -- applied to the voluntary or activity.

ng. -- Sense organ (Physiol.), a specially irritable mechanism by which some one natural force or form of energy is enabled to excite sensory nerves; as the eye, ear, an end bulb or tactile corpuscle, etc. -- Sense organule (Anat.), one of the modified epithelial cells in or near which the fibers of the sensory nerve…

A general or commander of land forces in the Turkish empire; especially, the commander-in-chief of minister of war.

Forcing or forced; -- a direction placed over a note, to signify that it must be executed with peculiar emphasis and force; -- marked fz (an abbreviation of forzando), sf, sfz, or

to direct; as, to shape the course of a vessel. To the stream, when neither friends, nor force, Nor spead nor art avail, he shapes his course. Denham. Charmed by their eyes, their manners I acqire, And shape my foolishness to their desire. Prior.

To be broken into fragments; to fal Some fragile bodies break but where the force is; some shatter and fly in many places. Bacon.

An action, resulting from applied forces, which tends to cause two contiguous parts of a body to slide relatively to each other in a direction parallel to their plane of contact; -- also called shearing stress, and tangential stress.

To destroy, as a ship at sea, by running ashore or on rocks or sandbanks, or by the force of wind and waves in a tempest. Shipwrecking storms and direful thunders break. Shak.