Search the Dictionary

The state or quality of being elegant; beauty as resulting from choice qualities and the complete absence of what deforms or impresses unpleasantly; grace given by art or practice; fine polish; refinement; -- said of manners, language, style, form, architecture, etc. That grace that elegance affords. Drayton. The endea…

eness, freedom from blemish, and the like; graceful; tasteful and highly attractive; as, elegant manners; elegant style of composition; an elegant speaker; an elegant structure. A more diligent cultivation of elegant literature. Prescott.

In a manner to please nice taste; with elegance; with due symmetry; richly.

Belonging to elegy, or written in elegiacs; plaintive; expressing sorrow or lamentation; as, an elegiac lay; elegiac strains. Elegiac griefs, and songs of love. Mrs. Browning.

Elegiac.

One who composes elegies. Goldsmith.

An elegist. [Obs.]

A write of elegies. T. Warton.

A judicial writ of execution, by which a defendant's goods are appraised and delivered to the plaintiff, and, if no sufficient to satisfy the debt, all of his lands are delivered, to be held till the debt is paid by the rents and profits, or until the defendant's interest has expired.

To lament in an elegy; to celebrate in elegiac verse; to bewail. Carlyle.

A mournful or plaintive poem; a funereal song; a poem of lamentation. Shak.

See Daddy longlegs, 2.

The act of gathering flowers.

To allege or cite before. Fotherby.

A native or inhabitant of Galicia, in Spain; a Galician.

Quick of perception; alert; sharp. [Scot.] Jamieson.

A palsy that affects one side only of the body. -- Hem`i"pleg"ic, a.

Hemiplegia.

, contrary to, or in violation of, human law; unlawful; illicit; hence, immoral; as, an illegal act; illegal trade; illegal love. Bp. Burnet.

The quality or condition of being illegal; unlawfulness; as, the illegality of trespass or of false imprisonment; also, an illegal act.