Search the Dictionary

effect or result. Writings of this kind, if conducted with candor, have a more particular tendency to the good of their country. Addison. In every experimental science, there is a tendency toward perfection. Macaulay.

The act of superintending; superintendence. Boyle.

d heat characteristic of ordinary abscesses, and lasting for years without exhibiting any tendency towards healing; a chronic abscess.

Having power, capacity, or tendency to absorb or imbibe. E. Darwin.

action or influence of a transitive verb terminates, or the immediate object of motion or tendency to, expressed by a preposition. It corresponds to the objective case in English.

Tendency or impulse to act. [R.] Acturience, or desire of action, in one form or another, whether as restlessness, ennui, dissatisfaction, or the imagination of something desirable. J. Grote.

c. ; the malevolent affections, hatred, envy, etc.; inclination; disposition; propensity; tendency. Affection is applicable to an unpleasant as well as a pleasant state of the mind, when impressed by any object or quality. Cogan.

Having a tendency to gather together, or to make collections. Taylor is eminently discursive, accumulative, and (to use one of his own words) agglomerative. Coleridge.

A tendency to become alkaline; or the state of a substance in which alkaline properties begin to be developed, or to predominant. Ure.

wer animal; to sensualize. The unconscious irony of the Epicurean poet on the animalizing tendency of his own philosophy. Coleridge.

Anything that neutralizes, or that counteracts an alkaline tendency in the system. Hoopplw.

Counteracting or preventing putrefaction, or a putrescent tendency in the system; antiputrefactive. Antiseptic surgery, that system of surgical practice which insists upon a systematic use of antiseptics in the performance of operations and the dressing of wounds.

The apogeotropic tendency of some leaves, and other parts.

n actions, as in the young to suck, in aquatic fowls to enter into water and to swim; the tendency of an organized body to seek what satisfies the wants of its organism. These lacteals have mouths, and by animal selection or appetency the absorb such part of the fluid as is agreeable to their palate. E. Darwin.…

Tendency; appetency. [Obs.] In all bodies there as an appetite of union. Bacon.

Having an habitual tendency; habitually liable or likely; -- used of things. My vines and peaches . . . were apt to have a soot or smuttiness upon their leaves and fruit. Temple. This tree, if unprotected, is apt to be stripped of the leaves by a leaf-cutting ant. Lubbock.

A natural or acquired disposition or capacity for a particular purpose, or tendency to a particular action or effect; as, oil has an aptitude to burn. He seems to have had a peculiar aptitude for the management of irregular troops. Macaulay.

Proneness; tendency; as, the aptness of iron to rust.

Exercised according to one's own will or caprice, and therefore conveying a notion of a tendency to abuse the possession of power. Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused licentiousness. Washington.

Having little or no tendency to take a fixed or definite position or direction: thus, a suspended magnetic needle, when rendered astatic, loses its polarity, or tendency to point in a given direction. Astatic pair (Magnetism), a pair of magnetic needles so mounted as to be nearly or quite astatic, as in some galvanomet…