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The under side of a cornice; a soffit.

Uncommonly nice and exact; precise; particular. You are rather point-devise in your accouterments. Shak. Thus he grew up, in logic point-devise, Perfect in grammar, and in rhetoric nice. Longfellow.

Skill or dexterity acquired by use; expertness. [R.] "His nice fence and his active practice." Shak.

Particular; fastidious; overnice. [Obs.] Lest that precious folk be with me wroth. Chaucer. Precious metals, the uncommon and highly valuable metals, esp. gold and silver. -- Precious stones, gems; jewels.

Having determinate limitations; exactly or sharply defined or stated; definite; exact; nice; not vague or equivocal; as, precise rules of morality. The law in this point is not precise. Bacon. For the hour precise Exacts our parting hence. Milton.

Affectedly nice; foppish; -- used in an ill sense. The pretty gentleman is the most complaisant in the world. Spectator.

Formal; precise; affectedly neat or nice; as, prim regularity; a prim person. Swift.

Fathers (Eccl.), the acknowledged Christian writers who flourished before the Council of Nice, A. D. 325. Shipley. -- Primitive groove (Anat.), a depression or groove in the epiblast of the primitive streak. It is not connected with the medullary groove, which appears later and in front of it. -- Primitive plane (Sp…

The quality or state of being prim; affected formality or niceness; preciseness; stiffness.

To shoot forward; to extend beyond something else; to be prominent; to jut; as, the cornice projects; branches project from the tree.

Dilatory; tedious; superfluous. [Obs.] "Lay by all nicety, and prolixious blushes." Shak.

theaters. The Arian doctrines were proscribed and anathematized in the famous Council of Nice. Waterland.

A genus of minute unicellular algæ including the red snow plant (Protococcus nivalis).

Any unicellular plant, or plant forming only a plasmodium, having reproduction only by fission, gemmation, or cell division.

Any protoplasmic filament or irregular process projecting from any unicellular organism, or from any animal or plant call.

A nice point of exactness in conduct, ceremony, or proceeding; particularity or exactness in forms; as, the punctilios of a public ceremony. They will not part with the least punctilio in their opinions and practices. Fuller .

Attentive to punctilio; very nice or exact in the forms of behavior, etiquette, or mutual intercourse; precise; exact in the smallest particulars. "A punctilious observance of divine laws." Rogers. "Very punctilious copies of any letters. The Nation. Punctilious in the simple and intelligible instances of common life.…

A nice point of form or ceremony. Bacon.

Observant of nice points; punctilious; precise. Punctual to tediousness in all that he relates. Bp. Burnet. So much on punctual niceties they stand. C. Pitt.

Nicely; prettily. [Archaic] Halliwell.