Search the Dictionary

fastidious; captious; censorious; exacting. O gentle lady, do not put me to 't, For I am nothing, if not critical. Shak.

obstruct; to hinder; to clash or interfere with. In each thing give him way; cross him in nothing. Shak. An oyster may be crossed onlove. Sheridan.

Where rivulets dance their wayward round. Wordsworth. To dance on a rope, or To dance on nothing, to be hanged.

Dedicated; set apart; devoted; consecrated. "Dedicate to nothing temporal." Shak.

say, shall I deduce my rhymes From the dire nation in its early times Pope. Reasoning is nothing but the faculty of deducing unknown truths from principles already known. Locke. See what regard will be paid to the pedigree which deduces your descent from kings and conquerors. Sir W. Scott.

Overthrow; defeat. [Obs.] "Nothing but loss in their defeature." Beau. & Fl.

rcle;" the definition of "wit;" an exact definition; a loose definition. Definition being nothing but making another understand by words what the term defined stands for. Locke.

Delftware. Five nothings in five plates of delph. Swift.

y denotative; telling us that such as object has such a term to denote it, but telling us nothing as to any single attribute. Latham.

disconnected; immethodical; aimless; as, desultory minds. Atterbury. He [Goldsmith] knew nothing accurately; his reading had been desultory. Macaulay.

A particle or atom endowed with the vital principle. The individual is nothing. He is no more than the diatom, the bit of protoplasm. Mrs. E. Lynn Linton.

ssen the authority or dignity of; to put down; to degrade; to abase; to weaken. This doth nothing diminish their opinion. Robynson (More's Utopia). I will diminish them, that they shall no more rule over the nations. Ezek. xxix. 15. O thou . . . at whose sight all the stars Hide their diminished heads. Milton.…

onformable, or congruous; Preach you truly the doctrine which you have received, and each nothing that is disagreeable thereunto. Udall.

confidence, or favor; to discharge; to turn away. They blame the favorites, and think it nothing extraordinary that the queen should . . . resolve to discard them. Swift.

r the performance of a trust or duty. Indefatigable in the discharge of business. Motley. Nothing can absolve us from the discharge of those duties. L'Estrange.

The act of disconnecting, or state of being disconnected; separation; want of union. Nothing was therefore to be left in all the subordinate members but weakness, disconnection, and confusion. Burke.

of; to lessen the reputation of; as, the duelist dishonors himself to maintain his honor. Nothing . . . that may dishonor Our law, or stain my vow of Nazarite. Milton.

he continuity of; to disconnect; to disunite; to sunder; to loosen; to undo; to separate. Nothing can dissolve us. Shak. Down fell the duke, his joints dissolved asunder. Fairfax. For one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another. The Declaration of Independence.

To place at a distance or remotely. I heard nothing thereof at Oxford, being then miles distanced thence. Fuller.

To make away; to put away. Nothing but death Shall e'er divorce my dignities. Shak.