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t or inventing; contrivance or construction of that which has not before existed; as, the invention of logarithms; the invention of the art of printing.

lties; exhibiting skill and readiness in avoiding danger or escaping difficulty; ready in invention or execution; -- applied to persons and to acts; as, an adroit mechanic, an adroit reply. "Adroit in the application of the telescope and quadrant." Horsley. "He was adroit in intrigue." Macaulay.

To stop; to fix or rest. My invention . . . anchors on Isabel. Shak.

To quicken; to prompt. [Obs.] To appromt our invention. Bacon.

ce answering to a trigger, by which the burning match was applied. The musket was a later invention. [Written also harquebus.]

The condition of being barren; sterility; unproductiveness. A total barrenness of invention. Dryden.

day of origin or commencement. Those barbarous ages past, succeeded next The birthday of invention. Cowper.

with difficulty or unusual effort; -- often with up. To bolster baseness. Drayton. Shoddy inventions designed to bolster up a factitious pride. Compton Reade.

bag or sack with its contents; hence, a stock or store; an accumulation; as, a budget of inventions.

A description of some invention, designed to be patented, lodged in the patent office before the patent right is applied for, and operating as a bar to the issue of letters patent to any other person, respecting the same invention.

The invention or combination of the parts of any literary work or discourse, or of a work of art; as, the composition of a poem or a piece of music. "The constant habit of elaborate composition." Macaulay.

Contrivance; invention; arrangement; design; plan. [Obs.] Consider the admirable contrivement and artifice of this great fabric. Glanvill. Active to meet their contrivements. Sir G. Buck.

Music in parts; part writing; harmony; polyphonic music. See Polyphony. Counterpoint, an invention equivalent to a new creation of music. Whewell.

Pertaining to Daguerre, or to his invention of the daguerreotype.

your tender hopes." Akenside. Usury dulls and damps all industries, improvements, and new inventions, wherein money would be stirring if it were not for this slug. Bacon. How many a day has been damped and darkened by an angry word! Sir J. Lubbock. The failure of his enterprise damped the spirit of the soldiers. Macaul…

; to please highly; as, a beautiful landscape delights the eye; harmony delights the ear. Inventions to delight the taste. Shak. Delight our souls with talk of knightly deeds. Tennyson.

The invention and conduct of the subject; the disposition of every part, and the general order of the whole. Arts of design, those into which the designing of artistic forms and figures enters as a principal part, as architecture, painting, engraving, sculpture. -- School of design, one in which are taught the inventi…

Delineation; sketch; design; ideal; invention. [Obs.] For though that some mean artist's skill were shown In mingling colors, or in placing light, Yet still the fair designment was his own. Dryden.

That which is devised, or formed by design; a contrivance; an invention; a project; a scheme; often, a scheme to deceive; a stratagem; an artifice. His device in against Babylon, to destroy it. Jer. li. 11. Their recent device of demanding benevolences. Hallam. He disappointeth the devices of the crafty. Job v. 12.…

on of the blood. A brilliant career of discovery and conquest. Prescott. We speak of the "invention" of printing, the discovery of America. Trench.