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The tendency to, or capability of suffering, spasm.

y; to purify from the corrupting influence of the world; to give a spiritual character or tendency to; as, to spiritualize soul. This seen in the clear air, and the whole spiritualized by endless recollections, fills the eye and the heart more forcibly than I can find words to say. Carlyle.

The tendency to undergo change, characteristic of both animal and vegetable organisms, and not restrained or cheked by the environment.

feeling, temperament, or disposition, or from a native internal proneness, readiness, or tendency, without constraint; as, a spontaneous gift or proportion.

n 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.

Turn; tendency; inborn disposition. Cf. 1st Strain. Because heretics have a strain of madness, he applied her with some corporal chastisements. Hayward.

Current; drift; tendency; series of tending or moving causes; as, the stream of opinions or manners. Gulf stream. See under Gulf. -- Stream anchor, Stream cable. (Naut.) See under Anchor, and Cable. -- Stream ice, blocks of ice floating in a mass together in some definite direction. -- Stream tin, particles or masse…

Tending to subvert; having a tendency to overthrow and ruin. Lying is a vice subversive of the very ends and design of conversation. Rogers.

Free course; unrestrained liberty or license; tendency. "Take thy swing." Dryden. To prevent anything which may prove an obstacle to the full swing of his genius. Burke. Full swing. See under Full. -- Swing beam (Railway Mach.), a crosspiece sustaining the car body, and so suspended from the framing of a truck that it…

em produces in the others a state or condition like that of himself. This is shown in the tendency to yawn which a person often feels on seeing another yawn, or the strong inclination to become hysteric experienced by many women on seeing another person suffering with hysteria.

Tendency. [Obs.]

state of holding on in a continuous course; manner of continuity; constant mode; general tendency; course; career. Along the cool sequestered vale of life They kept the noiseless tenor of their away. Gray.

the validity of an argument. Experience is the surest standard by which to test the real tendency of the existing constitution. Washington.

Tendency or direction of causes, influences, or events; course; current. There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Shak.

n made in the direction of a place or thing and attaining it, access; and also, motion or tendency without arrival; movement toward; -- opposed to Ant: from. "To Canterbury they wend." Chaucer. Stay with us, go not to Wittenberg. Shak. So to the sylvan lodge They came, that like Pomona's arbor smiled. Milton. I'll to h…

A turning or twisting; tendency to turn, or cause to turn, about an axis.

The tendency, as of a rope, to untwist after being twisted.

Having power, or a tendency, to transform.

Inclination in a particular direction; tendency; general direction; as, the trend of a coast. Trend of an anchor. (Naut.) (a) The lower end of the shank of an anchor, being the same distance on the shank from the throat that the arm measures from the throat to the bill. R. H. Dana, Jr. (b) The angle made by the line of…

To give another direction, tendency, or inclination to; to direct otherwise; to deflect; to incline differently; -- used both literally and figuratively; as, to turn the eyes to the heavens; to turn a horse from the road, or a ship from her course; to turn the attention to or from something. "Expert when to advance, or…