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An official seat, as of a chief magistrate or a judge, but esp. that of a professor; hence, the office itself. The chair of a philosophical school. Whewell. A chair of philology. M. Arnold.

certain office or duty; as, in the miserable character of a slave; in his character as a magistrate; her character as a daughter.

A word or combination of words sung or spoken in the practice of magic; a magical combination of words, characters, etc.; an incantation. My high charms work. Shak.

One who charms, or has power to charm; one who uses the power of enchantment; a magician. Deut. xviii. 11.

An official having charge of a hsien, or administrative district, in China; a district magistrate, responsible for good order in his hsien (which see), and having jurisdiction in its civil and criminal cases.

A vain, foolish, or incongruous fancy, or creature of the imagination; as, the chimera of an author. Burke.

Merely imaginary; fanciful; fantastic; wildly or vainly conceived; having, or capable of having, no existence except in thought; as, chimerical projects.

in distinguishing what is to be preferred, and in giving a preference; discrimination. I imagine they [the apothegms of Cæsar] were collected with judgment and choice. Bacon.

A device in a magic lantern or stereopticon to produce kaleidoscopic effects.

that of the Olympian gods. The characteristics of chthonian worship are propitiatory and magical rites and generalized or euphemistic names of the deities, which are supposed to have been primarily ghosts.

A machine, combining magic lantern and kinetoscope features, for projecting on a screen a series of pictures, moved rapidly (25 to 50 a second) and intermittently before an objective lens, and producing by persistence of vision the illusion of continuous motion; a moving-picture machine; also, any of several other mach…

cumference of a circle. -- Circular cubics (Math.), curves of the third order which are imagined to pass through the two circular points at infinity. -- Circular functions. (Math.) See under Function. -- Circular instruments, mathematical instruments employed for measuring angles, in which the graduation extends rou…

The rotation of a limb round an imaginary axis, so as to describe a concial surface.

suspicion or in disgrace; to be in disfavor. -- In the clouds, in the realm of facy and imagination; beyond reason; visionary.

Built of, or in, the clouds; airy; unsubstantial; imaginary. Cowper. So vanished my cloud-built palace. Goldsmith.

ate; to fill to loathing; to surfeit. [Who can] cloy the hungry edge of appetite By bare imagination of a feast Shak. He sometimes cloys his readers instead of satisfying. Dryden.

An imaginary country of idleness and luxury.

ess of converting metal into money. The care of the coinage was committed to the inferior magistrates. Arbuthnot.

Fictitious or imaginary; unreal; as, a commentitious system of religion. [Obs.] Warburton.

Extent; reach; sweep; capacity; sphere; as, the compass of his eye; the compass of imagination. The compass of his argument. Wodsworth.