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s; or one who acts or speaks in behalf of a person or a cause; a defender; an advocate; a hero. A stouter champion never handled sword. Shak. Champions of law and liberty. Fisher Ames.

To make an onset or rush; as, to charge with fixed bayonets. Like your heroes of antiquity, he charges in iron. Glanvill. "Charge for the guns!" he said. Tennyson.

day (December 28) observed by mass or festival in commemoration of the children slain by Herod at Bethlehem; -- called also Holy Innocent's Day.

Pertaining to chivalry or knight-errantry; warlike; heroic; gallant; high-spirited; high-minded; magnanimous. In brave pursuit of chivalrous emprise. Spenser.

An epic poem, which celebrates the exploits of the Spanish national hero, Ruy Diaz.

Rupicola aurantia) having a beautiful crest. -- Cock of the walk, a chief or master; the hero of the hour; one who has overcrowed, or got the better of, rivals or competitors. -- Cock of the woods. See Capercailzie.

Of a size larger than heroic. See Heroic.

every line. Pope. Tasso is full of conceits . . . which are not only below the dignity of heroic verse but contrary to its nature. Dryden.

pt; a notion; a universal; the product of a rational belief or judgment. See Concept. He [Herodotus] says that the sun draws or attracts the water; a metaphorical term obviously intended to denote some more general and abstract conception than that of the visible operation which the word primarily signifies. Whewell.…

Having sexual lust; libidinous; lustful; lecherous; salacious. Johnson.

or nations united by a league; a confederation. The Grecian common wealth, . . . the most heroic confederacy that ever existed. Harris. Virgil has a whole confederacy against him. Dryden.

on defective or presumptive evidence; probable inference; surmise; guess; suspicion. He [Herodotus] would thus have corrected his first loose conjecture by a real study of nature. Whewell. Conjectures, fancies, built on nothing firm. Milton.

A small European heron (Ardea minuta, and other allied species).

The heron [Obs.] Ainsworth.

Having a bill shaped like the colter of a plow, or like a knife, as the heron, stork, etc.

A tribe of wading birds including the stork, heron, crane, etc.

The circle of subjects connected with the exploits of the hero or heroes of some particular period which have severed as a popular theme for poetry, as the legend aof Arthur and the knights of the Round Table, and that of Charlemagne and his paladins.

poets, certain epic poets who followed Homer, and wrote merely on the Trojan war and its heroes; -- so called because keeping within the circle of a singe subject. Also, any series or coterie of poets writing on one subject. Milman.

rcourse; transaction; as, to have dealings with a person. Double dealing, insincere, treacherous dealing; duplicity. -- Plain dealing, fair, sincere, honorable dealing; honest, outspoken expression of opinion.

with a bone in his mouth. Shak. Death's-head moth (Zoöl.), a very large European moth (Acherontia atropos), so called from a figure resembling a human skull on the back of the thorax; -- called also death's-head sphinx.