Search the Dictionary

aning, to maltreat exceedingly. [Archaic] Your rhymes assassinate our fame. Dryden. Such usage as your honorable lords Afford me, assassinated and betrayed. Milton.

loy or metal to be assayed. Ure. Assay and essay are radically the same word; but modern usage has appropriated assay chiefly to experiments in metallurgy, and essay to intellectual and bodily efforts. See Essay.]

Three asterisks placed in this manner, *, to direct attention to a particular passage.

A small dam to prevent free passage of water in an adit or level.

Absence or closure of a natural passage or channel of the body; imperforation.

To predict or foretell, as from signs or omens; to betoken; to presage; to infer. It seems to augur genius. Sir W. Scott. I augur everything from the approbation the proposal has met with. J. F. W. Herschel.

An omen; prediction; prognostication; indication of the future; presage. From their flight strange auguries she drew. Drayton. He resigned himself . . . with a docility that gave little augury of his future greatness. Prescott.

having exalted birth, character, state, or authority. "Forms august." Pope. "August in visage." Dryden. "To shed that august blood." Macaulay. So beautiful and so august a spectacle. Burke. To mingle with a body so august. Byron.

finger, the little finger; so called because it can be readily introduced into the ear passage.

To establish by authority, as by usage or public opinion; to sanction; as, idioms authorized by usage.

for specially built racing cars. Automobiles are also commonly, and generally in British usage, called motor cars.

A way or opening for entrance into a place; a passage by which a place may by reached; a way of approach or of exit. "The avenues leading to the city by land." Macaulay. On every side were expanding new avenues of inquiry. Milman.

ng, "primage and average accustomed," average means a kind of composition established by usage for such charges, which were formerly assessed by way of average. Arnould. Abbott. Phillips.

The upper part of a lode, or the roof of a horizontal underground passage.

direction reverse to that in which it should travel; also, an explosion in the exhaust passages of such ah engine.

s for military service; also, the body of vassals thus assembled or summoned. In present usage, in France and Prussia, the most effective part of the population liable to military duty and not in the standing army.

Cruel; ferocious; inhuman; merciless. By their barbarous usage he died within a few days, to the grief of all that knew him. Clarendon.

A post sunk in the ground to receive the bars closing a passage into a field.

To fortify or close with a barricade or with barricades; to stop up, as a passage; to obstruct; as, the workmen barricaded the streets of Paris. The further end whereof [a bridge] was barricaded with barrels. Hakluyt.

A carpentry obstruction, stockade, or other obstacle made in a passage in order to stop an enemy.