Search the Dictionary

One who displays humor in speaking or writing; one who has a facetious fancy or genius; a wag; a droll. The reputation of wits and humorists. Addison.

Principle; an element; -- used by the alchemists in speaking of salt, sulphur, and mercury, which they considered as the three principles of all material bodies.

Rhetorical decoration in writing or speaking; vivid descriptions presenting or suggesting images of sensible objects; figures in discourse. I wish there may be in this poem any instance of good imagery. Dryden.

sin; purity of heart; blamelessness. The silence often of pure innocence Persuades when speaking fails. Shak. Banished from man's life his happiest life, Simplicity and spotless innocence! Milton.

piseth in his judgment all other folks as in regard of his value, of his cunning, of his speaking, and of his bearing. Chaucer. Can you not see or will ye not observe . . . How insolent of late he is become, How proud, how peremptory Shak.

he current or motion of; to cause a temporary cessation of; as, to interrupt the remarks speaking. Do not interrupt me in my course. Shak.

A mode of speaking peculiar to the Irish; an Hibernicism.

A fault in speaking or in composition, which consists in too frequent use of the letter l, or in doubling it erroneously.

re speech; hypocrisy. Bale. -- Lip reading, the catching of the words or meaning of one speaking by watching the motion of his lips without hearing his voice. Carpenter. -- Lip salve, a salve for sore lips. -- Lip service, expression by the lips of obedience and devotion without the performance of acts suitable to s…

A method of speaking or acting peculiar to a certain district; a local idiom or phrase.

A characteristic of Londoners; a mode of speaking peculiar to London.

Long-breathed; hence, tediously long in speaking; consuming much time; as, a long-winded talker. -- Long"-wind"ed*ness, n. A tedious, long-winded harangue. South.

Speaking; expressive. [R.] J. Philips.

Speaking pompously; using swelling discourse; bombastic; tumid in style; grandiloquent. -- Mag*nil"o*quent*ly, adv.

Evil speaking. [Obs.] Atterbury.

Speaking reproachfully; slanderous. [Obs.] Sir E. Sandys.

The person speaking, regarded as an object; myself; a pronoun of the first person used as the objective and dative case of the pronoum I; as, he struck me; he gave me the money, or he gave the money to me; he got me a hat, or he got a hat for me.

ven direction in a greater volume, as a very large funnel used as an ear trumpet or as a speaking trumpet.

Speaking sweetly or harmoniously.

Lady; mistress; -- used by Hindustani-speaking natives in India in addressing European women.