Search the Dictionary

To recover; to regain; to repossess. [Obs.] When their powers, impaired through labor long, With due repast, they had recured well. Spenser.

pect to rank, size, quantity, quality, value, etc.; to diminish; to lower; to degrade; to impair; as, to reduce a sergeant to the ranks; to reduce a drawing; to reduce expenses; to reduce the intensity of heat. "An ancient but reduced family." Sir W. Scott. Nothing so excellent but a man may fasten upon something belon…

Surplusage inserted in a pleading which may be rejected by the court without impairing the validity of what remains.

decay; to make to perish; to bring to destruction; to bring to poverty or bankruptcy; to impair seriously; to damage essentially; to overthrow. this mortal house I'll ruin. Shak. By thee raised, I ruin all my foes. Milton. The eyes of other people are the eyes that ruin us. Franklin. By the fireside there are old men…

Fig.: To degenerate in idleness; to become dull or impaired by inaction. Must I rust in Egypt never more Appear in arms, and be the chief of Greece Dryden.

Impaired by inaction, disuse, or neglect. [Hector,] in this dull and long-continued truce, Is rusty grown. Shak.

Fig.: To move from firmness; to weaken the stability of; to cause to waver; to impair the resolution of. When his doctrines grew too strong to be shook by his enemies, they persecuted his reputation. Atterbury. Thy equal fear that my firm faith and love Can by his fraud be shaken or seduced. Milton.…

Impaired, as by a shock.

Corrupted; imperfect; impaired; weakned. So great is his antipathy against episcopacy, that, if a seraphim himself should be a bishop, he would either find or make some sick feathers in his wings. Fuller. Sick bay (Naut.), an apartment in a vessel, used as the ship's hospital. -- Sick bed, the bed upon which a person…

To impair; to weaken. [Obs.] Shak.

To defame; to injure by maliciously uttering a false report; to tarnish or impair the reputation of by false tales maliciously told or propagated; to calumniate. O, do not slander him, for he is kind. Shak.

nd; the impulse or vibration which would occasion sound to a percipient if present with unimpaired; hence, the theory of vibrations in elastic media such cause sound; as, a treatise on sound.

To remain without ruin or injury; to hold good against tendencies to impair or injure; to be permanent; to endure; to last; hence, to find endurance, strength, or resources. My mind on its own center stands unmoved. Dryden.

Beaten, injured, or impaired by storms. Spenser.

To impair or disquality on account of age or infirmity. Sir T. Browne.

using and enjoying the profits of an estate or other thing belonging to another, without impairing the substance. Burrill.

a loose and popular sense, any visible diffused substance floating in the atmosphere and impairing its transparency, as smoke, fog, etc. The vapour which that fro the earth glood [glided]. Chaucer. Fire and hail; snow and vapors; stormy wind fulfilling his word. Ps. cxlviii. 8.

s, faulty, or imperfect; to render defective; to injure the substance or qualities of; to impair; to contaminate; to spoil; as, exaggeration vitiates a style of writing; sewer gas vitiates the air. A will vitiated and growth out of love with the truth disposes the understanding to error and delusion. South. Without car…

To wear away by degrees; to impair gradually; to diminish by constant loss; to use up; to consume; to spend; to wear out. Until your carcasses be wasted in the wilderness. Num. xiv. 33. O, were I able To waste it all myself, and leave ye none! Milton. Here condemned To waste eternal days in woe and pain. Milton. Wasted…

To impair, waste, or diminish, by continual attrition, scraping, percussion, on the like; to consume gradually; to cause to lower or disappear; to spend. That wicked wight his days doth wear. Spenser. The waters wear the stones. Job xiv. 19.