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Not happening in a short time; gradual; late. These changes in the heavens, though slow, produced Like change on sea and land, sidereal blast. Milton.

Growing gradually fainter and softer; dying away; morendo.

To become sober; -- often with down. Vance gradually sobered down. Ld. Lytton.

Becoming hard and thorny; tapering gradually to a rigid, leafless point; armed with spines. Gray.

Winding or circling round a center or pole and gradually receding from it; as, the spiral curve of a watch spring.

To get into one's power gradually and by imperceptible degrees; to take possession of by a gradual and imperceptible appropriation; -- with away. Variety of objects has a tendency to steal away the mind from its steady pursuit of any subject. I. Watts.

ded at the top, and resting on the edges of a kind of open box. They are unequal in size, gradually increasing from the smallest to the largest, and are tuned to the diatonic scale. The tones are produced by striking the pieces of wood with hard balls attached to flexible sticks.

Very narrow, and tapering gradually to a fine point from a broadish base; awl-shaped; linear.

To augment gradually in force or loudness, as the sound of a note.

A wasting away; a gradual losing of flesh by disease.

To cause to waste gradually, to emaciate. [R.] Harvey.

A tapering form; gradual diminution of thickness in an elongated object; as, the taper of a spire.

Becoming gradually smaller toward one end. -- Ta"per*ing*ly, adv.

ness, in cold water or other liquid, to give an excess of hardness, and then reheating it gradually until the hardness is reduced or drawn down to the degree required, as indicated by the color produced on a polished portion, or by the burning of oil. Tempering color, the shade of color that indicates the degree of tem…

in; -- used with some adverbs, as out, away, etc.; as, geological strata thin out, i. e., gradually diminish in thickness until they disappear.

A circle of sportsmen, who, by surrounding an extensive space and gradually closing in, bring a number of deer and game within a narrow compass. [Scot.] We'll quell the savage mountaineer, As their tinchel cows the game! Sir W. Scott.

s. This is composed of a hard, grayish, or yellowish, translucent or opaque matter, which gradually softens, and excites suppuration in its vicinity. It is most frequently found in the lungs, causing consumption. Tubercle bacillus (Med.), a minute vegetable organism (Bacillus tuberculosis) discovered by Koch, a German…

ith evacuations resembling pea soup in appearance, and prostration and muscular debility, gradually increasing and often becoming profound at the acme of the disease. Its local lesions are a scanty eruption of spots, resembling flea bites, on the belly, enlargement of the spleen, and ulceration of the intestines over t…

Tennyson. Pray you, undo this button. Shak. She took the spindle, and undoing the thread gradually, measured it. Sir W. Scott.

te bounding line, any picture, as an engraving, a photograph, or the like, which vanishes gradually at the edge.