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Inarticulate or unmeaning utterance; foolish talk; babble.

as, ripe fruit drops from a tree; wise words drop from the lips. Mutilations of which the meaning has dropped out of memory. H. Spencer. When the sound of dropping nuts is heard. Bryant.

See Dike. The spelling dyke is restricted by some to the geological meaning.

A Latin prefix meaning out, out of, from; also, without. See Ex-.

Consequence intended; purpose; meaning; general intent; -- with to. They spake to her to that effect. 2 Chron. xxxiv. 22.

To lessen; to detract from; to disparage. [A Latin meaning] [Obs.] Jer. Taylor. To elevate a piece (Gun.), to raise the muzzle; to lower the breech.

An adjectival suffix, meaning made of; as in golden, leaden, wooden.

A noun suffix having much the same meaning as -ence, but more commonly signifying the quality or state; as, emergency, efficiency. See -ancy.

A dark, obscure, or inexplicable saying; a riddle; a statement, the hidden meaning of which is to be discovered or guessed. A custom was among the ancients of proposing an enigma at festivals. Pope.

A prefix, meaning upon, beside, among, on the outside, above, over. It becomes ep- before a vowel, as in epoch, and eph- before a Greek aspirate, as in ephemeral.

my commendations equal to your merit. Dryden. Whose voice an equal messenger Conveyed thy meaning mild. Emerson.

A prefix, meaning equally; as, equidistant; equiangular.

wer, effect, import, and the like; alike in significance and value; of the same import or meaning. For now to serve and to minister, servile and ministerial, are terms equivalent. South.

A word or expression capable of different meanings; an ambiguous term; an equivoque. In languages of great ductility, equivocals like that just referred to are rarely found. Fitzed. Hall.

ral; as, ethic discourses or epistles; an ethical system; ethical philosophy. The ethical meaning of the miracles. Trench. Ethical dative (Gram.), a use of the dative of a pronoun to signify that the person or thing spoken of is regarded with interest by some one; as, Quid mihi Celsus agit How does my friend Celsus do…

story of words, tracing out their origin, primitive significance, and changes of from and meaning.

Fig.: To make empty; to deprive. [R.] Evacuate the Scriptures of their most important meaning. Coleriage.

ive sense of without, as in exalbuminuos, exsanguinous. In some words, it intensifies the meaning; in others, it has little affect on the signification. It becomes ef- before f, as in effuse. The form e- occurs instead of ex- before b, d, g, l, m, n, r, and v, as in ebullient, emanate, enormous, etc. In words from the…

anifest, or intelligible; to clear of obscurity; to expound; to unfold and illustrate the meaning of; as, to explain a chapter of the Bible. Commentators to explain the difficult passages to you. Gay. To explain away, to get rid of by explanation. "Those explain the meaning quite "away." Pope.

The meaning attributed to anything by one who explains it; definition; inerpretation; sense. Different explanations [of the Trinity]. Bp. Burnet.