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A chief of a monastery, corresponding to abbot in the Roman Catholic church.

One of the chief magistrates in ancient Athens, especially, by preëminence, the first of the nine chief magistrates. -- Ar*chon"tic, a.

An archbishop or other chief prelate.

A chief priest; also, a kind of vicar, or a rural dean.

The chief primate. Milton.

A chief or transcendent traitor. I. Watts.

A chief treasurer. Specifically, the great treasurer of the German empire.

An oily liquid substance, C8H13O2N, the chief alkaloid of the betel nut, to which the latter owes its anthelmintic action.

The nobles or chief persons in a state; a privileged class or patrician order; (in a popular use) those who are regarded as superior to the rest of the community, as in rank, fortune, or intellect.

"That which is behind"; the rear; -- chiefly used as an adjective in the sense of behind, rear, subordinate. Arriere fee, Arriere fief, a fee or fief dependent on a superior fee, or a fee held of a feudatory. -- Arriere vassal, the vassal of a vassal.

nsional difference (Astron.), the difference between oblique and right ascension; -- used chiefly as expressing the difference between the time of the rising or setting of a body and six o'clock, or six hours from its meridian passage.

One of the chiefs or pontiffs of the Roman province of Asia, who had the superintendence of the public games and religious rites. Milner.

A genus of plants of the natural order Leguminosæ. The species are chiefly natives of the Cape of Good Hope.

The venomous asp. [Chiefly poetic] Shak. Tennyson.

Ure. Assay and essay are radically the same word; but modern usage has appropriated assay chiefly to experiments in metallurgy, and essay to intellectual and bodily efforts. See Essay.]

An appointment of time and place for meeting or interview; -- used chiefly of love interviews, and now commonly in a bad sense. While nymphs take treats, or assignations give. Pope.

Indemnification for injury; satisfaction. [Chiefly in Scots law]

A hetman, or chief of the Cossacks.

The chief law officer of the state, empowered to act in all litigation in which the law-executing power is a party, and to advise this supreme executive whenever required. Wharton.

rines of Newton, and the epistemological theories of Locke, in the preceding century. Its chief center was in France, where it gave rise to the skepticism of Voltaire , the naturalism of Rousseau, the sensationalism of Condillac, and the publication of the "Encyclopedia" by D'Alembert and Diderot. In Germany, Lessing,…