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Hence: The highest point, as of success, prosperity, or the like; culmination. I have touched the highest point of all my greatness, And from that full meridian of my glory I haste now to my setting. Shak.

To turn to dust; to cause to crumble; to cause to waste away. [Time's] gradual touch Has moldered into beauty many a tower. Mason.

Impulsive power; force; momentum. The moments or quantities of motion in bodies. Berkley. Touch, with lightest moment of impulse, His free will. Milton.

of writing, and an extended sensory and motor training (with special emphasis on vision, touch, perception of movement, and their interconnections), mediated by a patented, standardized system of "didactic apparatus," which is declared to be "auto-regulative." Most of the chief features of the method are borrowed from…

arouse the feelings or passions of; especially, to excite to tenderness or compassion; to touch pathetically; to excite, as an emotion. Shak. When he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them. Matt. ix. 36. [The use of images] in orations and poetry is to move pity or terror. Felton.

Exciting movement of the mind; adapted to move the sympathies, passions, or affections; touching; pathetic; as, a moving appeal. I sang an old moving story. Coleridge. Moving force (Mech.), a force that accelerates, retards, or deflects the motion of a body. -- Moving plant (Bot.), a leguminous plant (Desmodium gyrans…

Irritable; touchy. [Colloq.]

ot unnatural in feelings. To leave his wife, to leave his babes, ... He wants the natural touch. Shak.

tinguished from that which is artifical, or forced, or remote from actual experience. One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. Shak.

Close to one's interests, affection, etc.; touching, or affecting intimately; intimate; dear; as, a near friend.

To hit at, or in, the nick; to touch rightly; to strike at the precise point or time. The just season of doing things must be nicked, and all accidents improved. L'Estrange.

te by the electrolytic disposition of copper, lead peroxide, etc. They may be produced by touching with a pointed zinc rod a silver plate on which is a solution of copper sulphate.

Any plant of a genus of herbs (Impatiens) having capsules which, if touched when ripe, discharge their seeds. -- See Impatiens.

To touch with the nose; to push the nose into or against; hence, to interfere with; to treat insolently. Lambs . . . nosing the mother's udder. Tennyson. A sort of national convention, dubious in its nature . . . nosed Parliament in the very seat of its authority. Burke.

To touch gently, as with the elbow, in order to call attention or convey intimation.

ible or tangible; as, he observed an object in the distance; all the objects in sight; he touched a strange object in the dark.

e real cause, becomes the occasion of the action of the efficient cause; thus, the act of touching gunpowder with fire is the occasional, but not the efficient, cause of an explosion.

Denoting opposition or negation. [Obs.] The questions no way touch upon puritanism, either off or on. Bp. Sanderson. From off, off from; off. "A live coal...taken with the tongs from off the altar." Is. vi. 6. -- Off and on. (a) Not constantly; not regularly; now and then; occasionally. (b) (Naut.) On different tacks,…

the genus Anastomus, allied to the stork; -- so called because the two parts of the bill touch only at the base and tip. One species inhabits India, another Africa. Called also open- beak. See Illust. (m), under Beak.

; plastic; -- said of the effect or impression produced by any substance on the organs of touch, taste, or smell, and also on the organism as a whole.