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The act or process of boiling anything in a watery fluid to extract its virtues. In decoction . . . it either purgeth at the top or settleth at the bottom. Bacon.

A discharge or flowing of humors or fluid matter, as from the nose in catarrh; -- sometimes used synonymously with inflammation. Dunglison.

The act of plunging into a fluid; a drowning.

vy; opaque; as, a dense crowd; a dense forest; a dense fog. All sorts of bodies, firm and fluid, dense and rare. Ray. To replace the cloudy barrier dense. Cowper.

remove obstructions or impediments in; to clear from anything that hinders the passage of fluids; as, to deobstruct the pores or lacteals. Arbuthnot.

Removing obstructions; having power to clear or open the natural ducts of the fluids and secretions of the body; aperient. -- n.

the act or process of diminishing the quantity of fluid in the vessels by bloodletting or otherwise; also excessive evacuation, as in severe diarrhea.

f a river). The deposit already formed affording to the succeeding portion of the charged fluid a basis. Kirwan.

A drawing of humors or fluids from one part of the body to another, to relieve or lessen a morbid process.

spoonfuls, as much as a dessert spoon will hold, usually reckoned at about two and a half fluid drams.

A morbidly frequent and profuse discharge of loose or fluid evacuations from the intestines, without tenesmus; a purging or looseness of the bowels; a flux.

der of cephalopods which includes those with two gills, an apparatus for emitting an inky fluid, and either eight or ten cephalic arms bearing suckers or hooks, as the octopi and squids. See Cephalopoda.

temperatures to which the two bulbs are exposed, by the change of position of the colored fluid, in consequence of the different expansions of the air in the bulbs. A graduated scale is attached to one leg of the tube. -- Differential windlass, or Chinese windlass, a windlass whose barrel has two parts of different di…

A flowing off on all sides; fluidity. [R.]

To pour out and cause to spread, as a fluid; to cause to flow on all sides; to send out, or extend, in all directions; to spread; to circulate; to disseminate; to scatter; as to diffuse information. Thence diffuse His good to worlds and ages infinite. Milton. We find this knowledge diffused among all civilized nations.…

The faculty of multiplying in two ways; -- by ova fecundated by spermatic fluid, and asexually, as by buds. See Parthenogenesis.

An instrument for measuring the dilatation or expansion of a substance, especially of a fluid.

To plunge or immerse; especially, to put for a moment into a liquid; to insert into a fluid and withdraw again. The priest shall dip his finger in the blood. Lev. iv. 6. [Wat'ry fowl] now dip their pinions in the briny deep. Pope. While the prime swallow dips his wing. Tennyson.

To throw off or deliver a load, charge, or burden; to unload; to emit or give vent to fluid or other contents; as, the water pipe discharges freely. The cloud, if it were oily or fatty, would not discharge. Bacon.

f being dissoluble; capacity of being dissolved by heat or moisture, and converted into a fluid.