Search the Dictionary

Nicety or fineness of form, texture, or constitution; softness; elegance; smoothness; tenderness; and hence, frailty or weakness; as, the delicacy of a fiber or a thread; delicacy of a hand or of the human form; delicacy of the skin; delicacy of frame.

Slight or smooth; light and yielding; -- said of texture; as, delicate lace or silk.

The canto, cantus, or soprano voice; the treble. Grove. Twenty doctors expound one text twenty ways, as children make descant upon plain song. Tyndale. She [the nightingale] all night long her amorous descant sung. Milton.

, that part of anatomy which treats of the forms and relations of parts, but not of their textures. -- Descriptive geometry, that branch of geometry. which treats of the graphic solution of problems involving three dimensions, by means of projections upon auxiliary planes. Davies & Peck (Math. Dict. ) -- De*scrip"tive…

Any textile fabric (esp. linen or cotton toweling) woven in diaper pattern. See 2.

nding. Prov. vii. 7. Our unassisted sight . . . is not acute enough to discern the minute texture of visible objects. Beattie. I wake, and I discern the truth. Tennyson.

A double reading, or twofold interpretation, as of a Scripture text. [R.]

dress; to doff; to do into, to put into the form of; to translate or transform into, as a text. Done to death by slanderous tongues. Shak. The ground of the difficulty is done away. Paley. Suspicions regarding his loyalty were entirely done away. Thackeray. To do on our own harness, that we may not; but we must do on t…

A textile fabric used for decorative purposes, especially when hung loosely and in folds carefully disturbed; as: (a) Garments or vestments of this character worn upon the body, or shown in the representations of the human figure in art. (b) Hangings of a room or hall, or about a bed. Like one that wraps the drapery of…

To drivel, or drop saliva; as, the child drools. His mouth drooling with texts. T. Parker.

A commercial name for textile fabrics, cottons, woolens, linen, silks, laces, etc., -- in distinction from groceries. [U.S.]

Needlework used to enrich textile fabrics, leather, etc.; also, the art of embroidering.

r; to correct; esp., to make corrections in (a literary work); to alter for the better by textual criticism, generally verbal.

Alteration by editorial criticism, as of a text so as to give a better reading; removal of errors or corruptions from a document; as, the book might be improved by judicious emendations.

To incorporate with the grain or texture of anything; to infuse deeply. See Ingrain. The stain hath become engrained by time. Sir W. Scott.

Breaking out; -- said of certain fungi which burst through the texture of leaves.

A light textile fabric, like a fine bunting.

Exposition; explanation; especially, a critical explanation of a text or portion of Scripture.

ay open the meaning of; to explain; to clear of obscurity; to interpret; as, to expound a text of Scripture, a law, a word, a meaning, or a riddle. Expound this matter more fully to me. Bunyan.

structure of anything; the manner in which the parts of a thing are united; workmanship; texture; make; as cloth of a beautiful fabric.