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Plainness; freedom from adornment; severe simplicity. Partly owing to the studied austerity of her dress, and partly to the lack of demonstration in her manners. Hawthorne.

An excessive or inordinate desire of gain; greediness after wealth; covetousness; cupidity. To desire money for its own sake, and in order to hoard it up, is avarice. Beattie.

Actuated by avarice; greedy of gain; immoderately desirous of accumulating property.

Longing eagerly for; eager; greedy. "Avid of gold, yet greedier of renown." Southey.

Eagerly; greedily.

Greediness; strong appetite; eagerness; intenseness of desire; as, to eat with avidity. His books were received and read with avidity. Milward.

One of a superior breed of cattle from Ayrshire, Scotland. Ayrshires are notable for the quantity and quality of their milk.

The Barbary horse, a superior breed introduces from Barbary into Spain by the Moors.

An instrument blown with a reed, and resembling a clarinet, but of much greater compass, embracing nearly four octaves.

A wind instrument of the double reed kind, furnished with holes, which are stopped by the fingers, and by keys, as in flutes. It forms the natural bass to the oboe, clarinet, etc.

Beggarly appearance. [R.] The freedom and the beggary of the old studio. Thackeray.

A tenet, or the body of tenets, held by the advocates of any class of views; doctrine; creed. In the heat of persecution to which Christian belief was subject upon its first promulgation. Hooker. Ultimate belief, a first principle incapable of proof; an intuitive truth; an intuition. Sir W. Hamilton.…

a girth. Johnson. -- Belly timber, food. [Ludicrous] Prior. -- Belly worm, a worm that breeds or lives in the belly (stomach or intestines). Johnson.

A reedlike grass; a stalk of stiff, coarse grass. His spear a bent, both stiff and strong. Drayton.

g associates or attendants. [Obs.] With such accommodation and besort As levels with her breeding. Shak.

To improve to the utmost; to use or dispose of to the greatest advantage. "Let there be freedom to carry their commodities where they can make the best of them." Bacon. (b) To reduce to the least possible inconvenience; as, to make the best of ill fortune or a bad bargain.

Obstinately and blindly attached to some creed, opinion practice, or ritual; unreasonably devoted to a system or party, and illiberal toward the opinions of others. "Bigoted to strife." Byron.

One of an old and well-known Mediterranean breed of domestic fowls with glossy black plumage, blue legs and feet, bright red comb and wattles, and white face. They are remarkable as egg layers.

lineage. Give us a prince of blood, a son of Priam. Shak. I am a gentleman of blood and breeding. Shak.

Having pure blood, or a large admixture or pure blood; of approved breed; of the best stock.