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to conform one's action or practice to; to keep; to heed; to obey; to comply with; as, to observe rules or commands; to observe civility. Ye shall observe the feast of unleavened bread. Ex. xii. 17. He wolde no such cursedness observe. Chaucer. Must I budge Must I observe you Shak. With solemn purpose to observe Immuta…

One who observes, or pays attention to, anything; especially, one engaged in, or trained to habits of, close and exact observation; as, an astronomical observer. The observed of all observers. Shak. Careful observers may foretell the hour, By sure prognostic, when to dread a shower. Swift.

The office or work of an observer.

To observe inaccurately; to mistake in observing. Locke.

One who misobserves; one who fails to observe properly.

heavenly bodies, due to the combined effect of the motion of light and the motion of the observer; called annual aberration, when the observer's motion is that of the earth in its orbit, and dairy or diurnal aberration, when of the earth on its axis; amounting when greatest, in the former case, to 20.4'', and in the l…

The lowest groups of animals, in which no nervous system has been observed.

ctions; penetrating; clever; shrewd; -- opposed to Ant: dull or Ant: stupid; as, an acute observer; acute remarks, or reasoning.

n near sunset or sunrise on the summits of mountains; specif., a reillumination sometimes observed after the summits have passed into shadow, supposed to be due to a curving downward (refraction) of the light rays from the west resulting from the cooling of the air.

To take notice; to observe; -- commonly followed by that. Dr. H. More.

The ceremony observed in conferring the degree of doctor of divinity in some European universities. It begins by a harangue of the chancellor addressed to the young doctor, who then receives the cap, and presides at the disputation (also called the aulic).

An auscultatory process, which consists in noting the tone of the observer's own voice, while he speaks, holding his head close to the patient's chest. Dunglison.

heavenly bodies, but now superseded by the quadrant and sextant; -- so called because the observer turned his back to the body observed.

A row of bright spots observed in connection with total eclipses of the sun. Just before and after a total eclipse, the slender, unobscured crescent of the sun's disk appears momentarily like a row of bright spots resembling a string of beads. The phenomenon (first fully described by Francis Baily, 1774 -- 1844) is tho…

Radiations first observed by the French physicist Henri Becquerel, in working with uranium and its compounds. They consist of a mixture of alpha, beta, and gamma rays.

Minute acicular or dendritic crystalline forms sometimes observed in glassy volcanic rocks.

A mountain specter (which see), esp. that observed on the Brocken, in the Harz Mountains.

dification of the voice sounds, by which they are intensified and heightened in pitch; -- observed in auscultation of the chest in certain cases of intro-thoracic disease.

aside the instruments of war, and make peace; -- a phrase used in allusion to the custom observed by the North American Indians, of burying a tomahawk when they conclude a peace.

Only; solely; merely. Observe but how their own principles combat one another. Milton. If they kill us, we shall but die. 2 Kings vii. 4. A formidable man but to his friends. Dryden.