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A point in duration; a moment; a portion of time too short to be estimated; also, any particular moment. There is scarce an instant between their flourishing and their not being. Hooker.

p., an instrument by means of which the area of a figure can be measured directly, or its moment of inertia, or statical moment, etc., be determined.

A moment; an instant; as, I will be ready in a jiffy. [Colloq.] J. & H. Smith.

inspired and gently swelled the sail. Dryden. Just now, the least possible time since; a moment ago.

ravels uniformly through the field of a magnifying glass. The observer sees each picture, momentarily, through a slit in a revolving disk, and these glimpses, blended by persistence of vision, give the impression of continuous motion.

, to take the lead; to be under the lead of another. At the time I speak of, and having a momentary lead, . . . I am sure I did my country important service. Burke.

mpanion in the crowd. Like following life thro' creatures you dissect, You lose it in the moment you detect. Pope .

Affair worthy of account; thing of consequence; importance; significance; moment; -- chiefly in the phrases what matter no matter, and the like. A prophet some, and some a poet, cry; No matter which, so neither of them lie. Dryden.

A point of time; a moment. I go this minute to attend the king. Dryden.

A militiaman who was to be ready to march at a moment's notice; -- a term used in the American Revolution.

Evolving; being evolved or produced. Nascent state (Chem.), the supposed instantaneous or momentary state of an uncombined atom or radical just separated from one compound acid, and not yet united with another, -- a hypothetical condition implying peculiarly active chemical properties; as, hydrogen in the nascent state…

A representation of the positions of the heavenly bodies as the moment of one's birth, supposed to indicate his future destinies; a horoscope. The Nativity, the birth or birthday of Christ; Christmas day. -- To cast, or calculate, one's nativity (Astrol.), to find out and represent the position of the heavenly bodies…

Of trifling moment; nimportant; trivial. [Obs.] The letter was not nice, but full of charge Of dear import. Shak.

A particular point or place considered as marked by a nick; the exact point or critical moment. To cut it off in the very nick. Howell. This nick of time is the critical occasion for the gainger of a point. L'Estrange.

The middle or highest point of the part of the ecliptic which is at any given moment above the horizon. It is the ninetieth degree of the ecliptic, reckoned from the points in which it is intersected by the horizon.

At the present time; at this moment; at the time of speaking; instantly; as, I will write now. I have a patient now living, at an advanced age, who discharged blood from his lungs thirty years ago. Arbuthnot.

ow away from, the land. -- To be off. (a) To depart; to escape; as, he was off without a moment's warning. (b) To be abandoned, as an agreement or purpose; as, the bet was declared to be off. [Colloq.] -- To come off, To cut off, To fall off, To go off, etc. See under Come, Cut, Fall, Go, etc. -- To get off. (a) To u…

sprung from Eternity, or, according to another version, Ahriman being the offspring of a moment of doubt on the part of Ormazd. Ormazd is attended by angels and archangels. He is represented as a bearded man inclosed in a winged circle, a conception probably derived from the Assyrian representations of Ashur.…

ll the earth o'erwhelm them. Shak. Gaza yet stands; but all her sons are fallen, All in a moment overwhelmed and fallen. Milton.

n it is broad, and with right angles. Parallelogram of velocities, forces, accelerations, momenta, etc. (Mech.), a parallelogram the diagonal of which represents the resultant of two velocities, forces, accelerations, momenta, etc., both in quantity and direction, when the velocities, forces, accelerations, momenta, et…