Search the Dictionary

omething maintained, upheld, or claimed, by another; to discuss; to reason; to debate; to altercate; to wrangle. Therefore disputed [reasoned, Rev. Ver .] he in synagogue with the Jews. Acts xvii. 17.

State of diversity or variation; variegation; modification; change; alternation. Infinite diversifications of tints may be produced. Adventurer.

A genus of freeswimming oceanic tunicates, allied to Salpa, and having alternate generations.

ating to, or given by, our Lord; as, the dominical (or Lord's) prayer. Howell. Some words altered in the dominical Gospels. Fuller. Dominical altar (Eccl.), the high altar. -- Dominical letter, the letter which, in almanacs, denotes Sunday, or the Lord's day (dies Domini). The first seven letters of the alphabet are u…

iged to take; a disagreeable portion thrust upon one. I am for curing the world by gentle alteratives, not by violent doses. W. Irving. I dare undertake that as fulsome a dose as you give him, he shall readily take it down. South.

l instrument in use among the Jews. Dan. iii. 5. It is supposed to be the same with the psaltery.

r ebb of life." Roscommon. Painting was then at its lowest ebb. Dryden. Ebb and flow, the alternate ebb and flood of the tide; often used figuratively. This alternation between unhealthy activity and depression, this ebb and flow of the industrial. A. T. Hadley.

-- Eccentric chuck (Mach.), a lathe chuck so constructed that the work held by it may be altered as to its center of motion, so as to produce combinations of eccentric combinations of eccentric circles. -- Eccentric gear. (Mach.) (a) The whole apparatus, strap, and other parts, by which the motion of an eccentric is…

precedes two, or more, coördinate words or phrases, and is introductory to an alternative. It is correlative to or. Either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth. 1 Kings xviii. 27. Few writers hesitate to use either in what is called a triple alternative; such as, We must…

they recover their former figure or dimensions, after the removal of external pressure or altering force; springiness; tendency to rebound; as, the elasticity of caoutchouc; the elasticity of the air.

The choice, made by a party, of two alternatives, by taking one of which, the chooser is excluded from the other.

magnetic theory of light (Physics), a theory of light which makes it consist in the rapid alternation of transient electric currents moving transversely to the direction of the ray.

of faults; to make better; to correct; esp., to make corrections in (a literary work); to alter for the better by textual criticism, generally verbal.

The act of altering for the better, or correcting what is erroneous or faulty; correction; improvement. "He lies in his sin without repentance or emendation." Jer. Taylor.

That degree of softness in a body beginning to melt which alters its shape; the first or lowest degree of fusibility.

ple of three, parts, and their embryos have but a single cotyledon, with the first leaves alternate. The endogens constitute one of the great primary classes of plants, and included all palms, true lilies, grasses, rushes, orchids, the banana, pineapple, etc. See Exogen.

aging and disengaging gear or machinery, that in which, or by means of which, one part is alternately brought into gear or out of gear with another part, as occasion may require.

Englished more properly, acts of fear and dissimulation. Milton. Caxton does not care to alter the French forms and words in the book which he was Englishing. T. L. K. Oliphant.

t of which drink is expressed. Bacon. And th'idle breath all utterly expressed. Spenser. Halters and racks can not express from thee More than by deeds. B. Jonson.

pect all bishops' dioceses, but to change what laws and statutes they should think fit to alter among the colleges. Evelyn.