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ter; correction or amendment of life, manners, or of anything vicious or corrupt; as, the reformation of manners; reformation of the age; reformation of abuses. Satire lashes vice into reformation. Dryden.

An old theory of the preëxistence of germs. Cf. Emboîtement.

Want of reformation; state of being unreformed. [Obs.] Bp. Hall.

; as, to adjourn the meeting; to adjourn a debate. It is a common practice to adjourn the reformation of their lives to a further time. Barrow. 'Tis a needful fitness That we adjourn this court till further day. Shak.

An alteration or change for the better; correction of a fault or of faults; reformation of life by quitting vices.

Of or pertaining to a church modeled on the English Reformation; Anglican; -- sometimes restricted to the ritualistic or High Church section of the Church of England.

or mask supposed to represent Cardinal Bellarmine, a leader in the Roman Catholic Counter Reformation, following the Reformation; -- called also graybeard, longbeard.

pain upon, by means of stripes, or in any other manner, for the purpose of punishment or reformation; to punish, as with stripes. How fine my master is! I am afraid He will chastise me. Shak. I am glad to see the vanity or envy of the canting chemists thus discovered and chastised. Boyle.

in with these laws the personal presence of the kings' son, as a concurrent cause of this reformation. Sir J. Davies. The concurrent testimony of antiquity. Bp. Warburton.

displease. [Obs.] He thought in no policy to distaste the English or Irish by a course of reformation, but sought to please them. Sir J. Davies.

subsequent influence; a memorable period; as, the epoch of maritime discovery, or of the Reformation. "So vast an epoch of time." F. Harrison. The influence of Chaucer continued to live even during the dreary interval which separates from one another two important epochs of our literary history. A. W. Ward.…

ase of, some part of the Latin service in the vernacular; -- common in English before the Reformation.

f atoms. It was from causes seemingly fortuitous . . . that all the mighty effects of the Reformation flowed. Robertson. So as to throw a glancing and fortuitous light upon the whole. Hazlitt.

to strain to do something difficult. The Church of England had struggled and heaved at a reformation ever since Wyclif's days. Atterbury.

ly disposed and arranged; not methodical; crude; as, an indigested array of facts. In hot reformations . . . the whole is generally crude, harsh, and indigested. Burke. This, like an indigested meteor, appeared and disappeared almost at the same time. South.

Limited in scope or effects; as, a reformation of a moderate kind. Hooker.

Used for punishment, discipline, and reformation. "Penitentiary houses." Blackstone.

stice on a convicted offender as a just retribution, and incidentally for the purposes of reformation and prevention.

n assault or attack; an effort; an attempt; hence, the time or occasion for action. Exact reformation is not perfected at the first push. Milton. hen it comes to the push, tic no more than talk. L' Estrange.

The act of forming anew; a second forming in order; as, the reformation of a column of troops into a hollow square.