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Admitting of doubt; not obvious, clear, or certain; questionable; not decided; not easy to be defined, classed, or named; as, a doubtful case, hue, claim, title, species, and the like. Beauty is but a vain and doubtful good. Shak. Is it a great cruelty to expel from our abode the enemy of our peace, or even the doubtfu…

Unquestionably. Beau. & Fl.

Occasioning doubt; not clear, or obvious; equivocal; questionable; doubtful; as, a dubious answer. Wiping the dingy shirt with a still more dubious pocket handkerchief. Thackeray.

Apostolic Eastern Church. It became estranged from the Western, or Roman, Church over the question of papal supremacy and the doctrine of the filioque, and a separation, begun in the latter part of the 9th century, became final in 1054. The Eastern Church consists of twelve (thirteen if the Bulgarian Church be included…

onomical distress in England to prompt the enterprises of colonization. Palfrey. Economic questions, such as money, usury, taxes, lands, and the employment of the people. H. C. Baird.

tline or sketch, regarded as containing the fundamental ideas or features of the thing in question; as, the elemental of a plan.

ompasses the finger; an army encompasses a city; a voyage encompassing the world. Shak. A question may be encompassed with difficulty. C. J. Smith. The love of all thy sons encompass thee. Tennyson.

ding, or the state of being surrounded; circumvention. By this encompassment and drift of question. Shak.

ity of lasting or duration; lastingness; continuance. Slurring with an evasive answer the question concerning the endurance of his own possession. Sir W. Scott.

d; to imbue as with venom; to imbitter. The envenomed tongue of calumny. Smollett. On the question of slavery opinion has of late years been peculiarly envenomed. Sir G. C. Lewis.

A mark indicating a question; a note of interrogation.

's more essential to a general Than courage. Denham. How to live -- that is the essential question for us. H. Spencer.

to examine a ship to know whether she is seaworthy; to examine a proposition, theory, or question. Examine well your own thoughts. Chaucer. Examine their counsels and their cares. Shak.

duced in a pretended action between two parties for the purpose of trying before a jury a question of fact which it becomes necessary to settle in the progress of a cause. Burill. Bouvier.

An assumption of a possible thing as a fact, irrespective of the question of its truth. Wharton.

fice, or indirectly to seek to draw forth; as, to fish for compliments. Any other fishing question. Sir W. Scott.

adjusted to; as, if the coat fits you, put it on. That's a bountiful answer that fits all questions. Shak. That time best fits the work. Shak. To fit out, to supply with necessaries or means; to furnish; to equip; as, to fit out a privateer. -- To fit up, to firnish with things suitable; to make proper for the recepti…

A judgment by which one is deprived or put of a right or thing in question.

Apt to change the mind suddenly; whimsical; capricious. It may be a question whether the wife or the woman was the more freakish of the two. L'Estrange. Freakish when well, and fretful when she's sick. Pope. -- Freak"ish*ly, adv. -- Freak"ish*ness, n.

The main point, as of a question; the point on which an action rests; the pith of a matter; as, the gist of a question.