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tional festivals of Greece, celebrated on the Isthmus of Corinth in the spring of every alternate year. They consisted of all kinds of athletic sports, wrestling, boxing, racing on foot and in chariots, and also contests in music and poetry. The prize was a garland of pine leaves.

, in consequence of which narrow portions at opposite limbs become visible or invisible alternately. It receives different names according to the manner in which it takes place; as: (a) Libration in longitude, that which, depending on the place of the moon in its elliptic orbit, causes small portions near the eastern a…

which the clergy and congregation join, the former leading and the latter responding in alternate sentences. It is usually of a penitential character. Supplications . . . for the appeasing of God's wrath were of the Greek church termed litanies, and rogations of the Latin. Hooker.

the mangle. The pinion is held to the rack by a groove in such a manner that it passes alternately from one side of the rack to the other, and thus gives motion to it in opposite directions, according to the side in which its teeth are engaged. -- Mangle wheel, a wheel in which the teeth, or pins, on its face, are in…

ccount. -- To mark time (Mil.), to keep the time of a marching step by moving the legs alternately without advancing.

A partly reduced copper sulphide, obtained by alternately roasting and melting copper ore in separating the metal from associated iron ores, and called coarse metal, fine metal, etc., according to the grade of fineness. On the exterior it is dark brown or black, but on a fresh surface is yellow or bronzy in color.…

Alternately responsive, as verses.

either directly or through intervening sexless generations. Opposed to monogenesis. See Alternate generation, under Generation.

e street, to squeeze the smaller operators in stocks and extract a profit from them, by alternately raising and depressing prices within a short range; -- said of the large dealers. [Cant] -- To milk a telegram, to use for one's own advantage the contents of a telegram belonging to another person. [Cant]…

n is reduced to flour by a succession of crackings, or of slight and partial crushings, alternately with sifting and sorting the product. -- Low milling, milling in which the reduction is effected in a single crushing or grinding. -- Milling cutter, a fluted, sharp-edged rotary cutter for dressing surfaces, as of met…

Having nodes or prominences; having the alternate joints enlarged, as the antennæ of certain insects.

his finger, and before the turning down of this." J. Webster (1607). -- Now . . . now, alternately; at one time . . . at another time. "Now high, now low, now master up, now miss." Pope.

Any tree or shrub of the genus Quercus. The oaks have alternate leaves, often variously lobed, and staminate flowers in catkins. The fruit is a smooth nut, called an acorn, which is more or less inclosed in a scaly involucre called the cup or cupule. There are now recognized about three hundred species, of which nearly…

An alternately produced form of certain cryptogamous plants, as ferns, mosses, and the like, which bears antheridia and archegonia, and so has sexual fructification, as contrasted with the sporophore, which is nonsexual, but produces spores in countless number. In ferns the oöphore is a minute prothallus; in mosses it…

Alternate; second; -- used esp. in connection with every; as, every other day, that is, each alternate day, every second day.

A stanza of eight lines of heroic verse, with three rhymes, the first six lines rhyming alternately and the last two forming a couplet. It was used by Byron in "Don Juan," by Keats in "Isabella," by Shelley in "The Witch of Atlas," etc.

our or more equal parts by perpendicular lines, and of two different tinctures disposed alternately.

, without fertilization, of cells capable of germination. It is one of the phenomena of alternate generation. Cf. Heterogamy, and Metagenesis.

A body so suspended from a fixed point as to swing freely to and fro by the alternate action of gravity and momentum. It is used to regulate the movements of clockwork and other machinery.

A vertical series of alternate disks of two dissimilar metals, as copper and zinc, laid up with disks of cloth or paper moistened with acid water between them, for producing a current of electricity; -- commonly called Volta's pile, voltaic pile, or galvanic pile.