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Affair; concern; matter; -- used in an indefinite sense, and modified by the connected words. It was a gentle business, and becoming The action of good women. Shak. Bestow Your needful counsel to our business. Shak.

An instrument for determining the amount of fatty matter or butter contained in a sample of milk.

mposition, giving the meaning of something aside, secondary, or incidental, or collateral matter, a thing private or avoiding notice; as, by-line, by-place, by-play, by-street. It was formerly more freely used in composition than it is now; as, by-business, by-concernment, by- design, by-interest, etc.…

han a general law or constitutional provision, and subsidiary to it; a rule relating to a matter of detail; as, civic societies often adopt a constitution and by-laws for the government of their members. In this sense the word has probably been influenced by by, meaning secondary or aside.

, to steal a bye. T. Hughes. By the bye, in passing; by way of digression; apropos to the matter in hand. [Written also by the by.]

A mass of matter concreted, congealed, or molded into a solid mass of any form, esp. into a form rather flat than high; as, a cake of soap; an ague cake. Cakes of rusting ice come rolling down the flood. Dryden. Cake urchin (Zoöl), any species of flat sea urchins belonging to the Clypeastroidea. -- Oil cake the refuse…

Consisting of, or containing, calcareous matter or lime salts; calcareous.

ce, or rendering it friable by the action of heat, esp. by the expulsion of some volatile matter, as when carbonic and acid is expelled from carbonate of calcium in the burning of limestone in order to make lime.

To reduce to a powder, or to a friable state, by the action of heat; to expel volatile matter from by means of heat, as carbonic acid from limestone, and thus (usually) to produce disintegration; as to, calcine bones.

leg below the knee. Calf's-foot jelly, jelly made from the feet of calves. The gelatinous matter of the feet is extracted by boiling, and is flavored with sugar, essences, etc.

A reference to, or statement of, an object, course, distance, or other matter of description in a survey or grant reguiring or calling for a carresponding object, etc., on the land.

To suppress or omit; to strike out, as matter in type. Canceled figures (Print), figures cast with a line across the face., as for use in arithmetics.

eference to its probable vote. I have made careful search on all hands, and canvassed the matter with all possible diligence. Woodward.

sses acid properties; -- hence called also carminic acid. Carmine red (Chem.), a coloring matter obtained from carmine as a purple-red substance, and probably allied to the phthaleïns.

The matter of which the philosopher's stone was believed to be composed.

ench philosopher René Descartes, or his philosophy. The Cartesion argument for reality of matter. Sir W. Hamilton. Cartesian coördinates (Geom), distance of a point from lines or planes; -- used in a system of representing geometric quantities, invented by Descartes. -- Cartesian devil, a small hollow glass figure, us…

A red coloring matter obtained from the safflower, or Carthamus tinctorius.

ving the skeleton in the state of cartilage, the bones containing little or no calcareous matter; said of certain fishes, as the sturgeon and the sharks.

The matters of fact or conditions involved in a suit, as distinguished from the questions of law; a suit or action at law; a cause. Let us consider the reason of the case, for nothing is law that is not reason. Sir John Powell. Not one case in the reports of our courts. Steele.

w off, or let go, as a rope. -- To cast off copy, (Print.), to estimate how much printed matter a given amount of copy will make, or how large the page must be in order that the copy may make a given number of pages. -- To cast one's self on or upon to yield or submit one's self unreservedly to. as to the mercy of an…