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The state of being prosperous; advance or gain in anything good or desirable; successful progress in any business or enterprise; attainment of the object desired; good fortune; success; as, commercial prosperity; national prosperity. Now prosperity begins to mellow. Shak. Prosperities can only be enjoyed by them who fe…

) To advance to a position of prominence responsibility; to promote. (b) To cause to make progress; to aid.

A progress; a course; a movement or progression.

Advancing with haste or speed; speedy in progression; in quick sequence; as, rapid growth; rapid improvement; rapid recurrence; rapid succession.

ratio, Inverse ratio, etc. See under Compound, Duplicate, etc. -- Ratio of a geometrical progression, the constant quantity by which each term is multiplied to produce the succeeding one.

Backward tendency or movement after revolution, reform, or great progress in any direction. The new king had, at the very moment at which his fame and fortune reached the highest point, predicted the coming reaction. Macaulay. Reaction time (Physiol.), in nerve physiology, the interval between the application of a stim…

One who favors reaction, or seeks to undo political progress or revolution.

That which has been, or might be, recorded; the known facts in the course, progress, or duration of anything, as in the life of a public man; as, a politician with a good or a bad record.

The act of passing back; passage back; return; retrogression. "The progress or regress of man". F. Harrison.

messenger reports to his employer what he has seen or ascertained; the committee reported progress. There is no man that may reporten all. Chaucer.

So as to resolve or clear up difficulties; clearly. [Obs.] Of that, and all the progress, more or less, Resolvedly more leisure shall express. Shak.

To keep delaying; to continue to hinder; to prevent from progress; to render more slow in progress; to impede; to hinder; as, to retard the march of an army; to retard the motion of a ship; -- opposed to Ant: accelerate.

backward; having a backward course; contrary; as, a retrograde motion; -- opposed to Ant: progressive. "Progressive and not retrograde." Bacon. It is most retrograde to our desire. Shak.

The act of turning, as a wheel or a solid body on its axis, as distinguished from the progressive motion of a revolving round another body or a distant point; thus, the daily turning of the earth on its axis is a rotation; its annual motion round the sun is a revolution.

That which rubs; that which tends to hinder or obstruct motion or progress; hindrance; obstruction, an impediment; especially, a difficulty or obstruction hard to overcome; a pinch. Every rub is smoothed on our way. Shak. To sleep, perchance to dream; ay, there's the rub. Shak. Upon this rub, the English ambassadors th…

To travel; to make progress; to be moved by mechanical means; to go; as, the steamboat runs regularly to Albany; the train runs to Chicago.

Gradation; succession of ascending and descending steps and degrees; progressive series; scheme of comparative rank or order; as, a scale of being. There is a certain scale of duties . . . which for want of studying in right order, all the world is in confusion. Milton.

Pertaining to an age, or the progress of ages, or to a long period of time; accomplished in a long progress of time; as, secular inequality; the secular refrigeration of the globe.

t workmen in making an adit under ground, and capable of being pushed along as excavation progresses.

The leading and most progressive Buddhist sect of Japan, resting its faith rather upon Amida than Gautama Buddha. Rites and ceremonies are held useless without uprightness.