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h moves or influences the mind, or operates on the passions; that which incites, or has a tendency to incite, to determination or action; that which prompts to good or ill; motive; spur; as, the love of money, and the desire of promotion, are two powerful incentives to action. The greatest obstacles, the greatest terro…

A direction or tendency from the true vertical or horizontal direction; as, the inclination of a column, or of a road bed.

To impart a tendency or propensity to, as to the will or affections; to turn; to dispose; to influence. Incline my heart unto thy testimonies. Ps. cxix. 36. Incline our hearts to keep this law. Book of Com. Prayer.

Having a leaning or tendency towards, or away from, a thing; disposed or moved by wish, desire, or judgment; as, a man inclined to virtue. "Each pensively inclined." Cowper.

rm indecision . . . implies an idea very nicely different from irresolution; yet it has a tendency to produce it. Shenstone. Indecision . . . is the natural accomplice of violence. Burke.

ical or moral, by a gradual process; controlling power quietly exerted; agency, force, or tendency of any kind which the sun exerts on animal and vegetable life; the influence of education on the mind; the influence, according to astrologers,of the stars over affairs. Astrologers call the evil influences of the stars,e…

Having a tendency to flow in; having influence; influential. [R.] Holdsworth.

A tendency or propensity to permanent residence in a place or abode; love of home and country.

from ancestors, as mental or physical qualities; as, he inherits a strong constitution, a tendency to disease, etc. Prince Harry is valiant; for the cold blood he did naturally inherit of his father he hath . . . manured . . . with good store of fertile sherris. Shak.

Opposed in tendency, influence, or effects; antagonistic; inconsistent; incompatible; adverse; repugnant. We are at war with a system, which, by its essence, is inimical to all other governments. Burke.

nsity prior to experience, and independent of instructions. Paley. An instinct is a blind tendency to some mode of action, independent of any consideration, on the part of the agent, of the end to which the action leads. Whately. An instinct is an agent which performs blindly and ignorantly a work of intelligence and k…

Likely or inclined to roll or pitch, as a ship in a heavy sea; having a tendency to labor.

to slip downward, backward, or away; to glide; -- mostly restricted to figurative uses. A tendency to lapse into the barbarity of those northern nations from whom we are descended. Swift. Homer, in his characters of Vulcan and Thersites, has lapsed into the burlesque character. Addison.

m longitudinal pressure or stress. -- Lateral strength (Mech.), strength which resists a tendency to fracture arising from lateral pressure. -- Lateral system (Bridge Building), the system of horizontal braces (as between two vertical trusses) by which lateral stiffness is secured.

Having a tendency to loosen or relax. Milton.

The act, or state, of inclining; inclination; tendency; as, a leaning towards Calvinism.

ve; friendly to great freedom in the constitution or administration of government; having tendency toward democratic or republican, as distinguished from monarchical or aristocratic, forms; as, liberal thinkers; liberal Christians; the Liberal party. I confess I see nothing liberal in this " order of thoughts," as Hobb…

The tendency or disposition to represent objects faithfully, without abstraction, conventionalities, or idealization.

th moisture, giving rise to fever and ague and many other symptoms characterized by their tendency to recur at definite and usually uniform intervals.

Virulence; tendency to a fatal issue; as, the malignancy of an ulcer or of a fever.