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ccustomedness; habit; habitual use. Assuetude of things hurtful doth make them lose their force to hurt. Bacon.

Want or loss of strength; debility; diminution of the vital forces.

Of a nature to astound; astonishing; amazing; as, an astounding force, statement, or fact. -- As*tound"ing*ly, adv.

umatic power, obtained from compressed air or the creation of a vacuum, is the propelling force. -- Atmospheric tides. See under Tide.

onnection; as, to cut the attachments of a muscle. The human mind . . . has exhausted its forces in the endeavor to rend the supernatural from its attachment to this history. I. Taylor.

To fall upon with force; to assail, as with force and arms; to assault. "Attack their lines." Dryden.

try to win, subdue, or overcome; as, one who attempts the virtue of a woman. Dear sir, of force I must attempt you further: Take some remembrance of us, as a tribute. Shak.

ate heed; the supposed power or faculty of attending. They say the tongues of dying men Enforce attention like deep harmony. Shak.

To lessen the amount, force, or value of; to make less complex; to weaken. To undersell our rivals . . . has led the manufacturer to . . . attenuate his processes, in the allotment of tasks, to an extreme point. I. Taylor. We may reject and reject till we attenuate history into sapless meagerness. Sir F. Palgrave.…

Having the power or quality of attracting or drawing; as, the attractive force of bodies. Sir I. Newton.

crease in size, amount, or degree; to swell; to make bigger; as, to augment an army by reëforcements; rain augments a stream; impatience augments an evil. But their spite still serves His glory to augment. Milton.

A word which expresses with augmented force the idea or the properties of the term from which it is derived; as, dullard, one very dull. Opposed to diminutive. Gibbs.

n the service of a nation at war; (rarely in sing.), a member of the allied or subsidiary force.

To be of use or advantage; to answer the purpose; to have strength, force, or efficacy sufficient to accomplish the object; as, the plea in bar must avail, that is, be sufficient to defeat the suit; this scheme will not avail; medicines will not avail to check the disease. "What signs avail " Milton. Words avail very l…

Having sufficient power, force, or efficacy, for the object; effectual; valid; as, an available plea. [Obs.] Laws human are available by consent. Hooker.

age or organ; as, the axial bones. Axial line (Magnetism), the line taken by the magnetic force in passing from one pole of a horseshoe magnet to the other. Faraday.

volute. -- Neutral axis (Mech.), the line of demarcation between the horizontal elastic forces of tension and compression, exerted by the fibers in any cross section of a girder. -- Optic axis of a crystal, the direction in which a ray of transmitted light suffers no double refraction. All crystals, not of the isome…

To drive or force backward; to cause to retreat or recede; as, to back oxen.

To equal in number, weight, force, or proportion; to counterpoise, counterbalance, counteract, or neutralize. One expression . . . must check and balance another. Kent.

The act or result of balancing or adjusting; equipoise; even adjustment of forces. [R.] Darwin.