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A step (in a flight of stairs); a degree. [Obs.] Every grise of fortune Is smoothed by that below. Shak.

That surface upon which the figures of a composition are set, and which relieves them by its plainness, being either of one tint or of tints but slightly contrasted with one another; as, crimson Bowers on a white ground. See Background, Foreground, and Middle-ground.

ay be made to include certain species of a genus, or a whole genus, or certain genera, or even several orders.

gmented; to advance; to extend; to wax; to accrue. Winter began to grow fast on. Knolles. Even just the sum that I do owe to you Is growing to me by Antipholus. Shak.

warrant; as, to guarantee the execution of a treaty. The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government. Constitution of the U. S.

another in his conduct or course of lifo; a director; a regulator. He will be our guide, even unto death. Ps. xlviii. 14.

f cavalry has a guidon. The pendants and guidons were carried by the officer of the army. Evelyn.

own guise; that is, in his own fashion, to suit himself. Chaucer. The swain replied, "It never was our guise To slight the poor, or aught humane despise." Pope.

Athletic; gymnastic. [Obs.] Have they not swordplayers, and every sort Of gymnic artists, wrestlers, riders, runners Milton.

republicanism, not forgetting the intermediate stages of oligarchy, limited monarchy, and even gynocracy; for I myself remember Alsatia governed for nearly nine months by an old fishwoman. Sir H. Scott.

f a hair; a very small distance; sometimes, definitely, the forty-eighth part of an inch. Every one could sling stones at an hairbreadth and not miss. Judg. xx. 16

The evening preceding Allhallows or All Saints' Day. [Scot.] Burns.

ictionary containing a natural history requires too many hands, as well as too much time, ever to be hoped for. Locke. I was always reckoned a lively hand at a simile. Hazlitt.

he hardness of the winters forces the breeders to house and handle their colts six months every year. Sir W. Temple.

ays (beginning with the 25th day of Kislev, corresponding to December), and is celebrated everywhere, chiefly as a festival of lights, by the Jews.

ctedly; also, the manner of occurrence or taking place; chance; fortune; accident; casual event; fate; luck; lot. Chaucer. Whether art it was or heedless hap. Spenser. Cursed be good haps, and cursed be they that build Their hopes on haps. Sir P. Sidney. Loving goes by haps: Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with trap…

By hap, chance, luck, or accident; perhaps; it may be. Lest haply ye be found even to fight against God. Acts v. 39.

Difficult to bear or endure; not easy to put up with or consent to; hence, severe; rigorous; oppressive; distressing; unjust; grasping; as, a hard lot; hard times; hard fare; a hard winter; hard conditions or terms. I never could drive a hard bargain. Burke.

dihood; boldness; firmness; assurance. Spenser. Plenty and peace breeds cowards; Hardness ever Of hardiness is mother. Shak. They who were not yet grown to the hardiness of avowing the contempt of the king. Clarendon.

s, involving arbitrary data, over a spherical surface, and the deduction of solutions for every point of space. The functions employed in this method are called spherical harmonic functions. Thomson & Tait. -- Harmonic suture (Anat.), an articulation by simple apposition of comparatively smooth surfaces or edges, as b…