Search the Dictionary

Of or pertaining to veins; venous; as, venal blood. [R.]

The quality or state of being venal, or purchasable; mercenariness; prostitution of talents, offices, or services, for money or reward; as, the venality of a corrupt court; the venality of an official. Complaints of Roman venality became louder. Milton.

In a venal manner.

A crystalline globulin, contained in oat kernels, very similar in composition to excelsin, but different in reactions and crystalline form.

A youth. [Obs.] Shak.

A genus of plants related to the banana.

Full of censure; censorious. The censorial declamation of Juvenal. T. Warton.

niments. He [Goldsmith] wore fine clothes, gave dinners of several courses, paid court to venal beauties. Macualay.

A mercenary or venal person. [U. S.]

Serving for hire or wages; venal; mercenary. "Hireling mourners." Dryden.

ing on the old prerogative. Shak. Without further insisting on the different tempers of Juvenal and Horace. Dryden.

The quality or state of being mercenary; venality. Boyle.

Acting for reward; serving for pay; paid; hired; hireling; venal; as, mercenary soldiers.

s; as, for example, if an orator should say, "I do not speak of my adversary's scandalous venality and rapacity, his brutal conduct, his treachery and malice." [Written also paralepsis, paralepsy, paralipsis.]

Capable of being bought, purchased, or obtained for a consideration; hence, venal; corrupt. Money being the counterbalance to all things purchasable by it, as much as you take off from the value of money, so much you add to the price of things exchanged. Locke.

what in public or private morals deserves rebuke; an invective poem; as, the Satires of Juvenal.

Venal; corrupt; jobbing; as, a trading politician.

Clematis vitalba, a climbing plant with white flowers. -- Traveler's tree. (Bot.) See Ravenala.