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To maintain throughout; to keep intact; as, to preserve appearances; to preserve silence. To preserve game, to protect it from extermination.

One who maintains that certainty is impossible, and that probability alone is to govern our faith and actions.

One who maintains the doctrine of progression in organic forms; -- opposed to uniformitarian. H. Spencer.

ething under or against; as, to prop up a fence or an old building; (Fig.) to sustain; to maintain; as, to prop a declining state. Shak. Till the bright mountains prop the incumbent sky. Pope. For being not propp'd by ancestry. Shak. I prop myself upon those few supports that are left me. Pope.

A false opinion or doctrine. "To maintain the atheistical pseudodox which judgeth evil good, and darkness light." T. Adams.

taining to Ptolemy, the geographer and astronomer. Ptolemaic system (Astron.), the system maintained by Ptolemy, who supposed the earth to be fixed in the center of the universe, with the sun and stars revolving around it. This theory was received for ages, until superseded by the Copernican system.…

In Great Britain, any of various schools maintained by the community, wholly or partly under public control, or maintained largely by endowment and not carried on chiefly for profit; specif., and commonly, any of various select and usually expensive endowed schools which give a liberal modern education or prepare pupil…

One who maintains that the New Testament was written in pure Greek. M. Stuart.

The system of the Quietists, who maintained that religion consists in the withdrawal of the mind from worldly interests and anxieties and its constant employment in the passive contemplation of God and his attributes.

teristic spectrum. It resembles barium chemically. Radium preparations are remarkable for maintaining themselves at a higher temperature than their surroundings, and for their radiations, which are of three kinds: alpha rays, beta rays, and gamma rays (see these terms). By reason of these rays they ionize gases, affect…

One who believes in realism; esp., one who maintains that generals, or the terms used to denote the genera and species of things, represent real existences, and are not mere names, as maintained by the nominalists.

To assert again or anew; to maintain after an omission to do so. Let us hope . . . we may have a body of authors who will reassert our claim to respectability in literature. Walsh.

onnecting a large pipe with a smaller one. -- Reducing valve, a device for automatically maintaining a diminished pressure of steam, air, gas, etc., in a pipe, or other receiver, which is fed from a boiler or pipe in which the pressure is higher than is desired in the receiver.

To adjust, or maintain, with respect to a desired rate, degree, or condition; as, to regulate the temperature of a room, the pressure of steam, the speed of a machine, etc. To regulate a watch or clock, to adjust its rate of running so that it will keep approximately standard time.

tian faith and practice. Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Washington. Religion will attend you . . . as pleasant and useful companion in every proper place, and every temperate occupation of life. Buckminster.

; to inhale air into the lungs, and exhale it from them, successively, for the purpose of maintaining the vitality of the blood.

One who maintains a thesis in reply, and whose province it is to refute objections, or overthrow arguments; -- distinguished from opponent. I. Watts.

candles, etc.) that were sanctioned in the second year of Edward VI., and never, as they maintain, forbidden by competennt authority, although generally disused. Schaff-Herzog Encyc. (b) Also, the principles and practices of those in the Protestant Episcopal Church who sympathize with this party in the Church of Engla…

g the roofing (see Roofing) and all the materials and construction necessary to carry and maintain the same upon the walls or other uprights. In the case of a building with vaulted ceilings protected by an outer roof, some writers call the vault the roof, and the outer protection the roof mask. It is better, however, t…

A follower of Sabellius, a presbyter of Ptolemais in the third century, who maintained that there is but one person in the Godhead, and that the Son and Holy Spirit are only different powers, operations, or offices of the one God the Father.