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To keep steady; to steady, morally. 'T is charity must ballast the heart. Hammond.

Morally low. Hence: Low-minded; unworthy; without dignity of sentiment; ignoble; mean; illiberal; menial; as, a base fellow; base motives; base occupations. "A cruel act of a base and a cowardish mind." Robynson (More's Utopia). "Base ingratitude." Milton.

A conception or image of consummate beauty, moral or physical, formed in the mind, free from all the deformities, defects, and blemishes seen in actual existence; an ideal or faultless standard or model.

s or properties pleasing to the eye, the ear, the intellect, the æsthetic faculty, or the moral sense. Beauty consists of a certain composition of color and figure, causing delight in the beholder. Locke. The production of beauty by a multiplicity of symmetrical parts uniting in a consistent whole. Wordsworth. The old…

To make little or less in a moral sense; to speak of in a depreciatory or contemptuous way. T. Jefferson.

To involve in moral darkness, or ignorance; to debar from intellectual light. Shall we to men benighted The lamp of life deny Heber.

t phase of the doctrine of utilitarianism taught by Jeremy Bentham; the doctrine that the morality of actions is estimated and determined by their utility; also, the theory that the sensibility to pleasure and the recoil from pain are the only motives which influence human desires and actions, and that these are the su…

A treatise on beasts; esp., one of the moralizing or allegorical beast tales written in the Middle Ages.

To improve the condition of, morally, physically, financially, socially, or otherwise. The constant effort of every man to better himself. Macaulay.

Hence: Morally distorted; not upright. [Poetic] I may be straight, though they themselves be bevel. Shak. A bevel angle, any angle other than one of 90º. -- Bevel wheel, a cogwheel whose working face is oblique to the axis. Knight.

g the mind indifferent; bent inclination. Strong love is a bias upon the thoughts. South. Morality influences men's lives, and gives a bias to all their actions. Locke.

se, a person who is intolerant of opinions which conflict with his own, as in politics or morals; one obstinately and blindly devoted to his own church, party, belief, or opinion. To doubt, where bigots had been content to wonder and believe. Macaulay.

To oblige, restrain, or hold, by authority, law, duty, promise, vow, affection, or other moral tie; as, to bind the conscience; to bind by kindness; bound by affection; commerce binds nations to each other. Who made our laws to bind us, not himself. Milton.

Fig.: Dismal, gloomy, or forbidding, like darkness; destitute of moral light or goodness; atrociously wicked; cruel; mournful; calamitous; horrible. "This day's black fate." "Black villainy." "Arise, black vengeance." "Black day." "Black despair." Shak.

Having a wicked, malignant disposition; morally bad.

r watery, as the eyes; to dim, or blur, as the sight. Figuratively: To obscure (mental or moral perception); to blind; to hoodwink. That tickling rheums Should ever tease the lungs and blear the sight. Cowper. To blear the eye of, to deceive; to impose upon. [Obs.] Chaucer.

Any mark of deformity or injury, whether physical or moral; anything; that diminishes beauty, or renders imperfect that which is otherwise well formed; that which impairs reputation. He shall take two he lambs without blemish, and one ewe lamb of the first year without blemish. Lev. xiv. 10. The reliefs of an envious m…

ot or spot, as of color or of ink; especially a large or irregular spot. Also Fig.; as, a moral blotch. Spots and blotches . . . some red, others yellow. Harvey.

Severe or over strict in morals; gloom; as, blue and sour religionists; suiting one who is over strict in morals; inculcating an impracticable, severe, or gloomy mortality; as, blue laws.

A moral stain or blot. Lest she . . . will with her railing set a great blur on mine honesty and good name. Udall.