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Tending to defeat or hinder; obviating; preventing the access of; as, a medicine preventive of disease. Physic is either curative or preventive. Sir T. Browne. Preventive service, the duty performed by the armed police in guarding the coast against smuggling. [Eng]

To hinder; to debar; to prevent; to preclude. Gates of burning adamant, Barred over us, prohibit all egress. Milton.

rd; to expel. (b) To divorce. -- To put back. (a) To push or thrust backwards; hence, to hinder; to delay. (b) To refuse; to deny. Coming from thee, I could not put him back. Shak.

To hinder; to delay. [Obs.] Johnson.

To hinder from unlimited enjoiment; to abridge. Though they two were committed, at least restrained of their liberty. Clarendon.

The act or process of restraining, or of holding back or hindering from motion or action, in any manner; hindrance of the will, or of any action, physical or mental. No man was altogether above the restrains of law, and no man altogether below its protection. Macaulay.

To keep delaying; to continue to hinder; to prevent from progress; to render more slow in progress; to impede; to hinder; as, to retard the march of an army; to retard the motion of a ship; -- opposed to Ant: accelerate.

of ratones [rats]." Piers Plowman. "A great solemn route." Chaucer. And ever he rode the hinderest of the route. Chaucer. A rout of people there assembled were. Spenser.

To hinder; to cross; to thwart. [R.] 'T is the duke's pleasure, Whose disposition, all the world well knows, Will not be rubbed nor stopped. Shak. To rub down. (a) To clean by rubbing; to comb or curry; as, to down a horse. (b) To reduce or remove by rubbing; as, to rub down the rough points. -- To rub off, to clean a…

To hinder from doing, suffering, or happening; to obviate the necessity of; to prevent; to spare. Will you not speak to save a lady's blush Dryden.

To close so as to hinder ingress or egress; as, to shut a door or a gate; to shut one's eyes or mouth.

One of the two dorsal tubular organs on the hinder part of the abdomen of aphids. They give exit to the honeydew. See Illust. under Aphis.

er by which its particles exclude or resist all others; hardness; massiveness. That which hinders the approach of two bodies when they are moving one toward another, I call solidity. Locke.

kind temper sometimes sours in adversity. They keep out melancholy from the virtuous, and hinder the hatred of vice from souring into severity. Addison.

by a mark or limit; notation of limits. This specification or limitation of the question hinders the disputers from wandering away from the precise point of inquiry. I. Watts.

The hinder part of a vessel; the stern. [R.] Swift.

The hinder part of anything. Spenser.

To arrest the progress of; to hinder; to impede; to shut in; as, to stop a traveler; to stop the course of a stream, or a flow of blood.

One who stops, closes, shuts, or hinders; that which stops or obstructs; that which closes or fills a vent or hole in a vessel.

To hinder from appearance; to stifle; to suppress. "Strangle such thoughts." Shak.