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The heart; spirit; temper; disposition. [Obs.] So priketh hem nature in here corages. Chaucer. My lord, cheer up your spirits; our foes are nigh, and this soft courage makes your followers faint. Shak.

ing, sourness, peevishness, or moroseness; harsh; cross; cynical; -- applied to feelings, disposition, or manners. Crabbed age and youth can not live together. Shak.

Readiness of belief; a disposition to believe on slight evidence. That implict credulity is the mark of a feeble mind will not be disputed. Sir W. Hamilton.

The attribute or quality of being cruel; a disposition to give unnecessary pain or suffering to others; inhumanity; barbarity. Pierced through the heart with your stern cruelty. Shak.

Disposition to inquire, investigate, or seek after knowledge; a desire to gratify the mind with new information or objects of interest; inquisitiveness. Milton.

Disposition to willful wrongdoing; malignity; perversity; cantankerousness; obstinacy. [Slang or Colloq., U. S.]

An attempt or disposition to deceive or lead into error; any declaration, artifice, or practice, which misleads another, or causes him to believe what is false; a contrivance to entrap; deception; a wily device; fraud. Making the ephah small and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit. Amos viii. 5. Fri…

The disposition to deceive; as, a man's deceitfulness may be habitual.

A state of opposition; willingness to flight; disposition to resist; contempt of opposition. He breathed defiance to my ears. Shak.

The act of bringing before the mind; presentation. The influence of princes upon the dispositions of their courts needs not the deposition of their examples, since it hath the authority of a known principle. W. Montagu.

The invention and conduct of the subject; the disposition of every part, and the general order of the whole. Arts of design, those into which the designing of artistic forms and figures enters as a principal part, as architecture, painting, engraving, sculpture. -- School of design, one in which are taught the inventi…

Choice of words for the expression of ideas; the construction, disposition, and application of words in discourse, with regard to clearness, accuracy, variety, etc.; mode of expression; language; as, the diction of Chaucer's poems. His diction blazes up into a sudden explosion of prophetic grandeur. De Quincey.…

e state of being diffident; distrust; want of confidence; doubt of the power, ability, or disposition of others. [Archaic] That affliction grew heavy upon me, and weighed me down even to a diffidence of God's mercy. Donne.

To deprive of the means or the disposition to harm; to render harmless or innocuous; as, to disarm a man's wrath.

honesty, probity, or integrity in principle; want of fairness and straightforwardness; a disposition to defraud, deceive, or betray; faithlessness.

eing disinclined; want of propensity, desire, or affection; slight aversion or dislike; indisposition. Disappointment gave him a disinclination to the fair sex. Arbuthnot. Having a disinclination to books or business. Guardian.

Want of order or regular disposition; lack of arrangement; confusion; disarray; as, the troops were thrown into disorder; the papers are in disorder.

Cast of mind; disposition; inclination; behavior; demeanor. [Obs.] He hath a person, and a smooth dispose To be suspected. Shak.

Belonging to disposition or natural, tendency. [Obs.] "Dispositive holiness." Jer. Taylor.

In a dispositive manner; by natural or moral disposition. [Obs.] Sir T. Browne. Do dispositively what Moses is recorded to have done literally, . . . break all the ten commandments at once. Boyle.