Search the Dictionary

Growing out of, or depending on, custom or tacit agreement; sanctioned by general concurrence or usage; formal. "Conventional decorum." Whewell. The conventional language appropriated to monarchs. Motley. The ordinary salutations, and other points of social behavior, are conventional. Latham.

eferring equally to the same subject. -- Coördinate conjunctions, conjunctions joining independent propositions. Rev. R. Morris.

the chief or leader of a party or interest. That noted corypheus [Dr. John Owen] of the Independent faction. South.

Pertaining to a plastic force as operative in the formation of the world independently of God; world-forming. "Cosmoplastic and hylozoic atheisms." Gudworth.

good friends. Shak. To count out. (a) To exclude (one) will not particapate or cannot be depended upon. (b) (House of Commons) To declare adjourned, as a sitting of the House, when it is ascertained that a quorum is not present. (c) To prevent the accession of (a person) to office, by a fraudulent return or count of t…

A tract of land; a region; the territory of an independent nation; (as distinguished from any other region, and with a personal pronoun) the region of one's birth, permanent residence, or citizenship. Return unto thy country, and to thy kindred. Gen. xxxxii. 9. I might have learned this by my last exile, that change of…

ic or "astral" body deemed to be separable from the physical body and capable of acting independently; a doppelgänger.

A person who owes his rise and fortune to another; a servile dependent; an instrument; a tool. A creature of the queen's, Lady Anne Bullen. Shak. Both Charles himself and his creature, Laud. Macualay.

ate, with the heavy and ungrounded charge of disloyalty and disaffection, an uncorrupt, independent, and reforming parliament. Burke.

The small moment, the exact point, the critical minute, on which every good work so much depends. South. Critical angle (Optics), that angle of incidence of a luminous ray at which it is wholly reflected, and no portion of it transmitted. The sine of this angle is the reciprocal of the refractive index of the medium.…

ce, or of a production in the fine arts; as, dramatic criticism. The elements ofcriticism depend on the two principles of Beauty and Truth, one of which is the final end or object of study in every one of its pursuits: Beauty, in letters and the arts; Truth, in history and sciences. Brande & C. By criticism, as it was…

p by a party or faction and repeated for effect; as, the party cry of the Tories. All now depends upon a good cry. Beaconsfield.

A small or short course. Upon a curricle in this world depends a long course of the next. Sir T. Browne.

ntials like a sloop. A cutter is narrower end deeper than a sloop of the same length, and depends for stability on a deep keel, often heavily weighted with lead.

A nonnucleated mass of protoplasm, the supposed simplest form of independent life differing from the amoeba, in which nuclei are present.

ection of what is addressed to the understanding. Nervous deafness, a variety of deafness dependent upon morbid change in some portion of the nervous system, especially the auditory nerve.

ocument or instrument containing such statement or proclamation; as, the Declaration of Independence (now preserved in Washington). In 1776 the Americans laid before Europe that noble Declaration, which ought to be hung up in the nursery of every king, and blazoned on the porch of every royal palace. Buckle.…

the ratio of those dying in a year to those living through the year is constant, being independent of the age of the persons.

nferred; derivable by reasoning, as a result or consequence. All properties of a triangle depend on, and are deducible from, the complex idea of three lines including a space. Locke.

regular, and incoherent; mental aberration; a roving or wandering of the mind, -- usually dependent on a fever or some other disease, and so distinguished from mania, or madness.