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ous events, usually the achievements of some hero, are narrated in an elevated style. The epic poem treats of one great, complex action, in a grand style and with fullness of detail. T. Arnold.

Epic. -- Ep"ic*al*ly, adv. Poems which have an epical character. Brande & C. His [Wordsworth's] longer poems (miscalled epical). Lowell.

Of or relating to the epicardium.

That of the pericardium which forms the outer surface of the heart; the cardiac pericardium.

An isopod crustacean, parasitic on shrimps.

The external or outermost layer of a fructified or ripened ovary. See Illust. under Endocarp.

A funeral song or discourse; an elegy. [R.] Donne.

Elegiac; funereal.

Epicedial. -- n.

An epicede.

Fig.: Sexless; neither one thing nor the other. The literary prigs epicene. Prof. Wilson. He represented an epicene species, neither churchman nor layman. J. A. Symonds.

Arising from the centrum of a vertebra. Owen.

Lenient; assuaging. [Obs.]

premises themselves, and the conclusion is derived in the ordinary manner. [Written also epicheirema.]

Upon or above the notochord; -- applied esp. to a vertebral column which develops upon the dorsal side of the notochord, as distinguished from a perichordal column, which develops around it.

In or of the country. [R.] Epichorial superstitions from every district of Europe. De Quincey.

A projection, formed by a separate ossification, at the scapular end of the clavicle of many birds.

Situated on the receptacle or disk of a flower.

A cavity formed by the invagination of the outer wall of the body, as the atrium of an amphioxus and possibly the body cavity of vertebrates.

Epicene. [R.] Hadley.