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To assail with unfriendly speech or writing; to begin a controversy with; to attempt to overthrow or bring into disrepute, by criticism or satire; to censure; as, to attack a man, or his opinions, in a pamphlet.

A peevish, ill-natured person. [North of Eng.]

Inarticulate speech; constant or confused murmur. The babble of our young children. Darwin. The babble of the stream. Tennyson.

Something commonplace, hackneyed, or trivial; the commonplace, in speech. The highest things were thus brought down to the banalities of discourse. J. Morley.

ainment of eating and drinking; often, a complimentary or ceremonious feast, followed by speeches.

A supernatural being supposed by the Irish and Scotch peasantry to warn a family of the speedy death of one of its members, by wailing or singing in a mournful voice under the windows of the house.

An offense against purity of style or language; any form of speech contrary to the pure idioms of a particular language. See Solecism. The Greeks were the first that branded a foreign term in any of their writers with the odious name of barbarism. G. Campbell.

Barbarism; impurity of speech. [Obs.] Swift.

To adopt a foreign or barbarous mode of speech. The ill habit . . . of wretched barbarizing against the Latin and Greek idiom, with their untutored Anglicisms. Milton.

To strip the bark from; to peel.

The whole body of barons or peers. The baronage of the kingdom. Bp. Burnet.

Difficulty of speech.

To remit or retrench a part; -- with of. Abate thy speed, and I will bate of mine. Dryden.

A ludicrous descent from the elevated to the low, in writing or speech; anticlimax.

Forthwith; speedily; quickly. [Obs.] Chaucer.

hy of; to become; to befit. A duty well beseeming the preachers. Clarendon. What form of speech or behavior beseemeth us, in our prayers to God Hocker.

Excessive or extended use of the b sound in speech, due to conversion of other sounds into it, as through inability to distinguish them from b, or because of difficulty in pronouncing them.

In a short time; soon; speedily; forth with. He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes. Shak.

From one to another of; mutually affecting. There was some speech of marriage Betwixt myself and her. Shak. Betwixt and between, in a midway position; so-so; neither one thing nor the other. [Colloq.]

n more hope that the deed shall not be bewrayed or known. Robynson (More's Utopia. ) Thy speech bewrayeth thee. Matt. xxvi. 73.