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A collection or body of men armed for war, esp. one organized in companies, battalions, regiments, brigades, and divisions, under proper officers.

for want of knowledge. Dryden. It is not arrogance, but timidity, of which the Christian body should now be arraigned by the world. I. Taylor.

The whole body of persons thus placed in order; an orderly collection; hence, a body of soldiers. A gallant array of nobles and cavaliers. Prescott.

e feudatories, but the vassals of these feudatories, to take the field for war; also, the body of vassals called or liable to be called to arms, as in ancient France.

One of the body segments of Arthropods. See Arthrostraca. Packard.

of artillery or gunnery. Campbell. Artillery park, or Park of artillery. (a) A collective body of siege or field artillery, including the guns, and the carriages, ammunition, appurtenances, equipments, and persons necessary for working them. (b) The place where the artillery is encamped or collected. -- Artillery trai…

noctial, counted from the beginning of Aries, which rises with a star, or other celestial body, in a right sphere; or the arc of the equator intercepted between the first point of Aries and that point of the equator that comes to the meridian with the star; -- expressed either in degrees or in time. -- Oblique ascensi…

used chiefly as expressing the difference between the time of the rising or setting of a body and six o'clock, or six hours from its meridian passage.

In ascomycetous fungi, the spherical, discoid, or cup-shaped body within which the asci are collected, and which constitutes the mature fructification. The different forms are known in mycology under distinct names. Called also spore fruit.

Specifically: The remains of the human body when burnt, or when "returned to dust" by natural decay. Their martyred blood and ashes sow. Milton. The coffins were broken open. The ashes were scattered to the winds. Macaulay.

Ashlar when in thin slabs and made to serve merely as a case to the body of the wall. Brande & C.

Without a material body; incorporeal. Todd.

To sprinkle, as water or dust, upon anybody or anything, or to besprinkle any one with a liquid or with dust. Heywood.

of calumniations reports or charges which tarnish reputation, like the bespattering of a body with foul water; calumny. Every candid critic would be ashamed to cast wholesale aspersions on the entire body of professional teachers. Grote. Who would by base aspersions blot thy virtue. Dryden.

To collect into one place or body; to bring or call together; to convene; to congregate. Thither he assembled all his train. Milton. All the men of Israel assembled themselves. 1 Kings viii. 2.

One of a body of devoted Jews who opposed the Hellenistic Jews, and supported the Asmoneans.

To appropriate and transform or incorporate into the substance of the assimilating body; to absorb or appropriate, as nourishment; as, food is assimilated and converted into organic tissue. Hence also animals and vegetables may assimilate their nourishment. Sir I. Newton. His mind had no power to assimilate the lessons…

The conversion of nutriment into the fluid or solid substance of the body, by the processes of digestion and absorption, whether in plants or animals. Not conversing the body, not repairing it by assimilation, but preserving it by ventilation. Sir T. Browne.

An assistant or helper; a body of helpers. [Obs.] Wat Tyler [was] killed by valiant Walworth, the lord mayor of London, and his assistance, . . . John Cavendish. Fuller.

s, nerves, muscles, etc. The stomach, the most associable of all the organs of the animal body. Med. Rep.