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freedom from foreign admixture or deleterious matter; as, the purity of water, of wine, of drugs, of metals.

quality of being impure in any sense; defilement; foulness; adulteration. Profaneness, impurity, or scandal, is not wit. Buckminster.

inister their tepid, genial airs. Philips. Justice was administered with an exactness and purity not before known. Macaulay.

The quality, or comparative purity, of gold or silver; fineness.

The white color in coats of arms, intended to represent silver, or, figuratively, purity, innocence, beauty, or gentleness; -- represented in engraving by a plain white surface. Weale.

nation, or experiment; to get to know; as, to ascertain the weight of a commodity, or the purity of a metal. He was there only for the purpose of ascertaining whether a descent on England was practicable. Macaulay.

Tested purity or value. [Obs.] With gold and pearl of rich assay. Spenser.

itated by the architects of the Renaissance. -- Attic faith, inviolable faith. -- Attic purity, special purity of language. -- Attic salt, Attic wit, a poignant, delicate wit, peculiar to the Athenians. -- Attic story. See Attic, n. -- Attic style, a style pure and elegant.

of Augsburg. Augustan age of any national literature, the period of its highest state of purity and refinement; -- so called because the reign of Augustus Cæsar was the golden age of Roman literature. Thus the reign of Louis XIV. (b. 1638) has been called the Augustan age of French literature, and that of Queen Anne (…

An offense against purity of style or language; any form of speech contrary to the pure idioms of a particular language. See Solecism. The Greeks were the first that branded a foreign term in any of their writers with the odious name of barbarism. G. Campbell.

Barbarism; impurity of speech. [Obs.] Swift.

siliceous or flinty slate, of a grayish or bluish black color. It is employed to test the purity of gold, the amount of alloy being indicated by the color left on the stone when rubbed by the metal.

The practice of doing good; active goodness, kindness, or charity; bounty springing from purity and goodness. And whose beneficence no charge exhausts. Cowper.

Descent from parents of recognized breed; excellence or purity of breed.

Whiteness; brightness; (as applied to moral conditions) usullied purity; innocence. [Obs.] Nor yor unquestioned integrity Shall e'er be sullied with one taint or spot That may take from your innocence and candor. Massinger.

One aiming at or pretending to a greater purity of like than others about him; -- applied to persons of various sects. See Albigenses.

In a chaste manner; with purity.

; disciplined; refined; purified; toned down. Sir. W. Scott. Of such a finished chastened purity. Tennyson.

Chastity; purity.

The state of being chaste; purity of body; freedom from unlawful sexual intercourse. She . . . hath preserved her spotless chastity. T. Carew.