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Conducted with secrecy; withdrawn from public notice, usually for an evil purpose; kept secret; hidden; private; underhand; as, a clandestine marriage. Locke.

a curve (Math.), the kind of a curve as expressed by the number of tangents that can be drawn from any point to the curve. A circle is of the second class. -- Class meeting (Methodist Church), a meeting of a class under the charge of a class leader, for counsel and relegious instruction.

Naut.), one of the ropes by which the clews of the courses of square-rigged vessels are drawn up to the lower yards. -- Clew line (Naut.), a rope by which a clew of one of the smaller square sails, as topsail, topgallant sail, or royal, is run up to its yard. -- Clew-line block (Naut.), The block through which a clew…

The sound made when a cork is forcibly drawn from a bottle. "The cloop of a cork wrenched from a bottle." Thackeray.

tion, but by some kind of chemical reaction; as, the spontaneous coagulation of freshly drawn blood; the coagulation of milk by rennet, or acid, and the coagulation of egg albumin by heat. Coagulation is generally the change of an albuminous body into an insoluble modification.

The European spotted flycatcher. Cobweb lawn, a fine linen, mentioned in 1640 as being in pieces of fifteen yards. Beck. Draper's Dict. Such a proud piece of cobweb lawn. Beau. & Fl. Cobweb micrometer, a micrometer in which threads of cobwed are substituted for wires.

g and tying together two opposite rafters; -- also, called simply collar. -- Collar of brawn, the quantity of brawn bound up in one parcel. [Eng.] Johnson. -- Collar day, a day of great ceremony at the English court, when persons, who are dignitaries of honorary orders, wear the collars of those orders. -- To slip t…

onvenience; accommodation; profit; benefit; advantage; interest; commodiousness. [Obs.] Drawn by the commodity of a footpath. B. Jonson. Men may seek their own commodity, yet if this were done with injury to others, it was not to be suffered. Hooker.

.] Shak. Complemental air (Physiol.), the air (averaging 100 cubic inches) which can be drawn into the lungs in addition to the tidal air, by the deepest possible inspiration. -- Complemental males (Zoöl.), peculiar small males living parasitically on the ordinary hermaphrodite individuals of certain barnacles.…

An experiment, or something from which a conclusion may be drawn. [Obs.] We practice likewise all conclusions of grafting and inoculating. Bacon.

the sides made in part of some elastic material which stretches to allow the boot to be drawn on and off. [U.S.] -- Congress water, a saline mineral water from the Congress spring at Saratoga, in the State of New York.

c Sections), two diameters of an ellipse or hyperbola such that each bisects all chords drawn parallel to the other. -- Conjugate focus (Opt.) See under Focus. -- Conjugate mirrors (Optics), two mirrors so placed that rays from the focus of one are received at the focus of the other, especially two concave mirrors so…

servation. Burke. Conservation of areas (Astron.), the principle that the radius vector drawn from a planet to the sun sweeps over equal areas in equal times. -- Conservation of energy, or Conservation of force (Mech.), the principle that the total energy of any material system is a quantity which can neither be incre…

firm; consolidated. [R.] A gentleman [should learn to ride] while he is tender and the brawns and sinews of his thighs not fully consolidate. Elyot.

Drawn together; bound; contracted; cramped.

To dawn together; to contract; to force to contract itself; to constrict; to cause to shrink. [R.] Strong liquors . . . intoxicate, constringe, harden the fibers, and coagulate the fluids. Arbuthnot.

To be drawn together so as to be diminished in size or extent; to shrink; to be reduced in compass or in duration; as, iron contracts in cooling; a rope contracts when wet. Years contracting to a moment. Wordsworth.

Drawn together; shrunken; wrinkled; narrow; as, a contracted brow; a contracted noun.

A proposition in which, after a conclusion from something supposed has been drawn, the order is inverted, making the conclusion the supposition or premises, what was first supposed becoming now the conclusion or inference. Thus, if two sides of a sides of a triangle are equal, the angles opposite the sides are equal; a…

Fig.: Any moral influence by which persons are caught, held, or drawn, as if by a cord; an enticement; as, the cords of the wicked; the cords of sin; the cords of vanity. The knots that tangle human creeds, The wounding cords that bind and strain The heart until it bleeds. Tennyson.