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To deprive of some power, right, or privilege, by positive restriction; to disable; to debar legally; as, a conviction of perjury disqualifies a man to be a witness.

The tincture sable or black when blazoned according to the fantastic system in which plants are substituted for the tinctures.

Like ebony, especially in color; black; dark. Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne. Young.

A compound decomposable, or subjected to decomposition, by an electric current.

One of the ultimate, undecomposable constituents of any kind of matter. Specifically: (Chem.) A substance which cannot be decomposed into different kinds of matter by any means at present employed; as, the elements of water are oxygen and hydrogen.

Similar, but not superposable, i. e., related to each other as a right-handed to a left-handed glove; -- said of certain hemihedral crystals.

Important in the highest degree; indispensable to the attainment of an object; indispensably necessary. Judgment's more essential to a general Than courage. Denham. How to live -- that is the essential question for us. H. Spencer.

In an essential manner or degree; in an indispensable degree; really; as, essentially different.

object; fit or proper under the circumstances; conducive to self-interest; desirable; advisable; advantageous; -- sometimes contradistinguished from right. It is expedient for you that I go away. John xvi. 7. Nothing but the right can ever be expedient, since that can never be true expediency which would sacrifice a gr…

Utmost limit or degree that is supposable or tolerable; hence, furthest degree; any undue departure from the mean; -- often in the plural: things at an extreme distance from each other, the most widely different states, etc.; as, extremes of heat and cold, of virtue and vice; extremes meet. His parsimony went to the ex…

le or impartial treatment; a fair or equal chance; justice. -- From fair to middling, passable; tolerable. [Colloq.] -- The fair sex, the female sex.

e for the feet; a chain by which an animal is confined by the foot, either made fast or disabled from free and rapid motion; a bond; a shackle. [They] bound him with fetters of brass. Judg. xvi. 21.

To oppose, hinder, or prevent, as if by an effectual command; as, an impassable river forbids the approach of the army. A blaze of glory that forbids the sight. Dryden.

To cause internal inflammation and soreness in the feet or limbs of (a horse), so as to disable or lame him.

The quality of being grave. His sables and his weeds, Importing health and graveness. Shak.

Articles ordinarily indispensable, but in the way at certain times. Ham. Nav. Encyc. Top hamper (Naut.), unnecessary spars and rigging kept aloft.

To lame or disable by cutting the tendons of the ham or knee; to hough; hence, to cripple; to incapacitate; to disable. So have they hamstrung the valor of the subject by seeking to effeminate us all at home. Milton.

A beam with projecting spikes, used to make a breach impassable.

To disable by cutting the tendons of the hock; to hamstring; to hough.

Of or pertaining to familiar intercourse; social; affable; conversable; companionable. [R.] His virtues active, chiefly, and homiletical, not those lazy, sullen ones of the cloister. Atterbury.