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A superior force which under certain circumstances is held to exempt from contract obligations; inevitable accident; -- a civil-law term used as nearly equivalent to, but broader than, the common-law term act of God (which see).

of cubic inches of air which can be forcibly exhaled after a full inspiration. -- Vital force. (Biol.) See under Force. The vital forces, according to Cope, are nerve force (neurism), growth force (bathmism), and thought force (phrenism), all under the direction and control of the vital principle. Apart from the phen…

ng organism are due to an unknown vital principle distinct from all chemical and physical forces.

The quality or state of being vital; the principle of life; vital force; animation; as, the vitality of eggs or vegetable seeds; the vitality of an enterprise.

of effect, either wholly or in part; to make void; to destroy, as the validity or binding force of an instrument or transaction; to annul; as, any undue influence exerted on a jury vitiates their verdict; fraud vitiates a contract.

Tenacity of life; vital force; natural vigor. [Obs.] The vivacity of some of these pensioners is little less than a miracle, they lived so long. Fuller.

Of no legal force or effect, incapable of confirmation or ratification; null. Cf. Voidable, 2. Void space (Physics), a vacuum.

Capable of being avoided, or of being adjudged void, invalid, and of no force; capable of being either avoided or confirmed. If the metropolitan . . . grants letters of administration, such administration is not, but voidable by sentence. Ayliffe.

Passing through the air on wings, or by the buoyant force of the atmosphere; flying; having the power to fly. [Obs.]

The unit of electro-motive force; -- defined by the International Electrical Congress in 1893 and by United States Statute as, that electro-motive force which steadily applied to a conductor whose resistance is one ohm will produce a current of one ampère. It is practically equivalent to

ed or extensible in the direction of the axis of the coil, in which direction its elastic force is exerted and employed.

A contest between nations or states, carried on by force, whether for defence, for revenging insults and redressing wrongs, for the extension of commerce, for the acquisition of territory, for obtaining and establishing the superiority and dominion of one over the other, or for any other purpose; armed conflict of sove…

off his rage. Addison. It instructs the scholar in the various methods of warding off the force of objections. I. Watts.

To waste or abrade by the force of water in motion; as, heavy rains wash a road or an embankment.

or component of current when it differs in phase by ninety degrees from the electromotive force which produces it, or of an electromotive force or component thereof when the current it produces differs from it in phase by 90 degrees.

resulting from the oscillatory motion of the particles composing it when disturbed by any force their position of rest; an undulation. The wave behind impels the wave before. Pope.

ult, and steep to scale. Milton. The season and ways were very improper for his majesty's forces to march so great a distance. Evelyn.

Not able to resist external force or onset; easily subdued or overcome; as, a weak barrier; as, a weak fortress.

e; as, to weaken the body or the mind; to weaken the hands of a magistrate; to weaken the force of an objection or an argument. Their hands shall be weakened from the work, that it be not done. Neh. vi. 9.

A light rain; a shower. [Obs.] Wyclif. Stress of weather, violent winds; force of tempests. -- To make fair weather, to flatter; to give flattering representations. [R.] -- To make good, or bad, weather (Naut.), to endure a gale well or ill; -- said of a vessel. Shak. -- Under the weather, ill; also, financially emba…