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ant or pressing; urgency; solicitation; application; suggestion; motion. Undertook at her instance to restore them. Sir W. Scott.

rong drinks; temperate; abstinent; sparing in the indulgence of the appetite or passions. Instances of longevity are chiefly among the abstemious. Arbuthnot.

The cause of continued pain of body or mind, as sickness, losses, etc.; an instance of grievous distress; a pain or grief. To repay that money will be a biting affliction. Shak.

A want of grammatical sequence or coherence in a sentence; an instance of a change of construction in a sentence so that the latter part does not syntactically correspond with the first part.

or rule. Different commentators have deduced from it the very opposite doctrines. In some instances this apparent antinomy is doubtful. De Quincey.

For instance; by way of example; thus; -- used to introduce illustrative phrases, sentences, or citations.

Of or pertaining to an uncle. In these rare instances, the law of pedigree, whether direct or avuncular, gives way. I. Taylor.

privilege or either house of Parliament, of Congress, or of a State legislature, as, for instance, by false swearing before a committee. Mozley. Abbott. - Breach of promise, violation of one's plighted word, esp. of a promise to marry. -- Breach of trust, violation of one's duty or faith in a matter entrusted to one.…

That which befalls, comes, or happens; an event; an instance; a circumstance, or all the circumstamces; condition; state of things; affair; as, a strange case; a case of injustice; the case of the Indian tribes. In any case thou shalt deliver him the pledge. Deut. xxiv. 13. If the case of the man be so with his wife. M…

The state of being a cully. Less frequent instances of eminent cullyism. Spectator.

Marked by promptness and decision. A noble instance of this attribute of the decisive character. J. Foster.

Tillotson. The escheators . . . defeated the right heir of his succession. Hallam. In one instance he defeated his own purpose. A. W. Ward.

An instance serving for illustration of a rule or precept, especially a problem to be solved, or a case to be determined, as an exercise in the application of the rules of any study or branch of science; as, in trigonometry and grammar, the principles and rules are illustrated by examples.

performance of some duty, in case of the failure of another person, who is, in the first instance, liable to such payment or performance; an engagement which secures or insures another against a contingency; a warranty; a security. Same as Guaranty. His interest seemed to be a guarantee for his zeal. Macaulay.…

onies and symbols in worship. Low-churchmen lay less stress on these points, and, in many instances, reject altogether the peculiar tenets of the high-church school. See Broad Church. -- High constable (Law), a chief of constabulary. See Constable, n., 2. -- High commission court,a court of ecclesiastical jurisdictio…

rom which they emerge unchanged, after a period of drought or deficiency of food. In some instances, a process of spore formation seems to occur within such cysts.

An instance of ignorance; a literary blunder. The many blunders and illiteracies of the first publishers of his [Shakespeare's] works. Pope.

ng images of sensible objects; figures in discourse. I wish there may be in this poem any instance of good imagery. Dryden.

Instance; urgency. [Obs.] Those heavenly precepts which our Lord and Savior with so great instancy gave. Hooker.

prevailed on the Galatians to Judaize so far as to observe the rites of Moses in various instances. They were Judaizing doctors, who taught the observation of the Mosaic law. Bp. Bull.