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A partly reduced copper sulphide, obtained by alternately roasting and melting copper ore in separating the metal from associated iron ores, and called coarse metal, fine metal, etc., according to the grade of fineness. On the exterior it is dark brown or black, but on a fresh surface is yellow or bronzy in color.…

Having a dull surface; unburnished; as, matted gold leaf or gilding. Matted glass, glass ornamented with figures on a dull ground.

hat into which a notion may be analyzed; the essence; the pith; the embodiment. He is the matter of virtue. B. Jonson.

Adhering to facts; not turning aside from absolute realities; not fanciful or imaginative; commonplace; dry.

Not being, or having, matter; as, matterless spirits. Davies (Wit's Pilgr. ).

Full of substance or matter; important. B. Jonson.

To talk superficially or ignorantly; to babble; to chatter. Of state affairs you can not smatter. Swift.

One who has only a slight, superficial knowledge; a sciolist.

sm. I had a great desire, not able to attain to a superficial skill in any, to have some smattering in all. Burton.

The matter or thought presented for consideration in some statement or discussion; that which is made the object of thought or study. As to the subject-matter, words are always to be understood as having a regard thereto. Blackstone. As science makes progress in any subject-matter, poetry recedes from it. J. H. Newman.…

The supposed origination of living organisms from lifeless matter; such genesis as does not involve the action of living parents; spontaneous generation; -- called also abiogeny, and opposed to biogenesis. I shall call the . . . doctrine that living matter may be produced by not living matter, the hypothesis of abiogen…

ere and there; widely. He went out, and began to publish it much, and to blaze abroad the matter. Mark i. 45. To be abroad. (a) To be wide of the mark; to be at fault; as, you are all abroad in your guess. (b) To be at a loss or nonplused.

A collection of pus or purulent matter in any tissue or organ of the body, the result of a morbid process. Cold abscess, an abscess of slow formation, unattended with the pain and heat characteristic of ordinary abscesses, and lasting for years without exhibiting any tendency towards healing; a chronic abscess.…

Considered apart from any application to a particular object; separated from matter; exiting in the mind only; as, abstract truth, abstract numbers. Hence: ideal; abstruse; difficult.

Separated from matter; abstract; ideal. [Obs.]

In an abstract state or manner; separately; absolutely; by itself; as, matter abstractly considered.

Characterized by accretion; made up; as, accrete matter.

The act of increasing, or the matter added, by an accession of parts externally; an extraneous addition; as, an accretion of earth. A mineral . . . augments not by grown, but by accretion. Owen. To strip off all the subordinate parts of his as a later accretion. Sir G. C. Lewis.

Seeds of the annotto tree; also, the coloring matter, annotto.

Abbott. -- Act in pais, a thing done out of court (anciently, in the country), and not a matter of record.