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An instrument, formerly much used for showing the time of day from the shadow of a style or gnomon on a graduated arc or surface; esp., a sundial; but there are lunar and astral dials. The style or gnomon is usually parallel to the earth's axis, but the dial plate may be either horizontal or vertical.…

Poured out; widely spread; not restrained; copious; full; esp., of style, opposed to concise or terse; verbose; prolix; as, a diffuse style; a diffuse writer. A diffuse and various knowledge of divine and human things. Milton.

state of being diffusive or diffuse; extensiveness; expansion; dispersion. Especially of style: Diffuseness; want of conciseness; prolixity. The fault that I find with a modern legend, it its diffusiveness. Addison.

A Linnæan order of plants having two styles.

Of or pertaining to the Digynia; having two styles.

In a dissimilar manner; in a varied style. With verdant shrubs dissimilarly gay. C. Smart.

To play or sing in a florid style, or with variations. [Obs.] Spenser.

A Linnæan order of plants having twelve styles.

Of or pertaining to the Dodecagynia; having twelve styles.

Low in style, and irregular in measure; as, doggerel rhymes. This may well be rhyme doggerel, quod he. Chaucer.

A style of light, bright-figured dress goods for women; also, a style of dress. Dolly Varden trout (Zoöl.), a trout of northwest America; -- called also bull trout, malma, and red-spotted trout. See Malma.

multuous assembly of fashionable people at a private house; a rout. [Archaic] Not unaptly styled a drum, from the noise and emptiness of the entertainment. Smollett.

A kind of dandy; especially, one characterized by an ultrafashionable style of dress and other affectations. [Recent] The social dude who affects English dress and English drawl. The American.

he Note under English. -- Early English architecture, the first of the pointed or Gothic styles used in England, succeeding the Norman style in the 12th and 13th centuries.

lity, difficulty, embarrassment, etc.; facility; liberty; naturalness; -- said of manner, style, etc.; as, ease of style, of behavior, of address. True ease in writing comes from art, not chance. Pope. Whate'er he did was done with so much ease, In him alone 't was natural to please. Dryden. At ease, free from pain, tr…

Freedom from effort, constraint, or formality; -- said of style, manner, etc. With painful care, but seeming easiness. Roscommon.

d of Russia. The Eastern Church accepts the first seven ecumenical councils (and is hence styled only schismatic, not heretical, by the Roman Catholic Church), has as its creed the Niceno- Constantinopolitan (without the later addition of the filioque, which, with the doctrine it represents, the church decisively rejec…

rom constraint, harshness, or formality; unconstrained; smooth; as, easy manners; an easy style. "The easy vigor of a line." Pope.

The rounded molding forming the bell of the capital of the Grecian Doric style, which is of a peculiar elastic curve. See Entablature.

A dancing tune in the Scotch style.