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is not by means of rules that such idioms as the following are made current: "I can make nothing of it." "He treats his subject home." Dryden. "It is that within us that makes for righteousness." M.Arnold. Gostwick (Eng. Gram. )

l; an innocent. Life . . . is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. Shak.

Not employed; unoccupied with business; inactive; doing nothing; as, idle workmen. Why stand ye here all the day idle Matt. xx. 6.

y. The imagination of common language -- the productive imagination of philosophers -- is nothing but the representative process plus the process to which I would give the name of the "comparative." Sir W. Hamilton. The power of the mind to decompose its conceptions, and to recombine the elements of them at its pleasur…

Acting with nothing interposed or between, or without the intervention of another object as a cause, means, or agency; acting, perceived, or produced, directly; as, an immediate cause. The immediate knowledge of the past is therefore impossible. Sir. W. Hamilton. Immediate amputation (Surg.), an amputation performed wi…

ndard or rule; not satisfying the taste or conscience; esthetically or morally defective. Nothing imperfect or deficient left Of all that he created. Milton. Then say not man's imperfect, Heaven in fault; Say rather, man's as perfect as he ought. Pope. Imperfect arch, an arch of less than a semicircle; a skew arch. --…

ght or consequence; of valuable content or bearing; significant; weighty. Things small as nothing . . . He makes important. Shak.

When he rehearsed his preachings and his doing unto the high apostles, they could improve nothing. Tyndale.

Not in the flesh; spiritual. [Obs.] I fear nothing . . . that devil carnate or incarnate can fairly do. Richardson.

Not declinable; not varied by inflective terminations; as, nihil (nothing), in Latin, is an indeclinable noun. -- n.

ate. -- Indefinite proposition (Logic), a statement whose subject is a common term, with nothing to indicate distribution or nondistribution; as, Man is mortal. -- Indefinite term (Logic), a negative term; as, the not-good.

Having nothing distinctive; common. -- In`dis*tinc"tive*ness, n.

e of, or indisposed to, effective action; habitually slack or remiss; effecting little or nothing; as, inefficient workmen; an inefficient administrator.

or probability; to imply; as, I inferred his determination from his silence. To infer is nothing but by virtue of one proposition laid down as true, to draw in another as true. Locke. Such opportunities always infer obligations. Atterbury.

erception. The . . . attributes of an insentient, inert substance. Reid. But there can be nothing like to this sensation in the rose, because it is insentient. Sir W. Hamilton.

infuse gently; to instill. All the art of rhetoric, besides order and clearness, are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and thereby mislead the judgment. Locke. Horace laughs to shame all follies and insinuates virtue, rather by familiar examples than by the severity of precepts. Dryden.…

, or overcome; insuperable; as, insurmountable difficulty or obstacle. Locke. Hope thinks nothing difficult; despair tells us that difficulty is insurmountable. I. Watts.

Lacking nothing of completeness; complete; perfect; uninjured; whole; entire. A local motion keepeth bodies integral. Bacon.

Out of season; untimely. [Obs.] Burton. Intempestive bashfulness gets nothing. Hales.

n, points of time, or events; as, an instant intervened between the flash and the report; nothing intervened ( i. e., between the intention and the execution) to prevent the undertaking.