Search the Dictionary

ppurpose; intention; aim; as, to labor for private or public ends. Losing her, the end of living lose. Dryden. When every man is his own end, all things will come to a bad end. Coleridge.

One of a group of hymenopterous insects whose larvæ feed parasitically upon living insects. See Ichneumon,

An artificial group, including all kinds of animals living parasitically in others.

That which environs or surrounds; surrounding conditions, influences, or forces, by which living forms are influenced and modified in their growth and development. It is no friendly environment, this of thine. Carlyle.

An unorganized or unformed ferment, in distinction from an organized or living ferment; a soluble, or chemical, ferment. Ptyalin, pepsin, diastase, and rennet are good examples of enzymes.

Epicurean habits of living; luxury.

Living upon the exterior of another animal; ectozoic; -- said of external parasites.

Of or pertaining to an eremite; hermitical; living in solitude. "An eremitical life in the woods." Fuller. "The eremitic instinct." Lowell.

The state of a hermit; a living in seclusion from social life.

nd exchange them. Locke. It is always very difficult to estimate the age in which you are living. J. C. Shairp.

The division of Aves which includes all the typical birds, or all living birds except the penguins and birds of ostrichlike form.

aving a fanlike tail; belonging to the Eurhipiduræ, a division of Aves which includes all living birds.

A general name for the history of the steps by which any living organism has acquired the morphological and physiological characters which distinguish it; a gradual unfolding of successive phases of growth or development.

Characterized by, or exhibiting, excess; overmuch. Excessive grief [is] the enemy to the living. Shak.

The property manifested by living organisms, and the elements and tissues of which they are constituted, of responding to the action of stimulants; irritability; as, nervous excitability.

An agent or influence which arouses vital activity, or produces increased action, in a living organism or in any of its tissues or parts; a stimulant.

An excrescence or appendage; an outgrowth. [Obs.] "Ornamental excrements." Fuller. Living creatures put forth (after their period of growth) nothing that is young but hair and nails, which are excrements and no parts. Bacon.

That which exists; a being; a creature; an entity; as, living existences.

essence. They [books] do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. Milton. The extraction of roots. (Math.) (a) The operation of finding the root of a given number or quantity. (b) The method or rule by which the operation is performed; evolution.…

ing; the giving to a thing an appearance of something which it is not. To counterfeit the living image of king in his person exceedeth all falsifications. Bacon.