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r reverence; deserving of honor and respect; -- generally implying an advanced age; as, a venerable magistrate; a venerable parent. He was a man of eternal self-sacrifice, and that is always venerable. De Quincey. Venerable men! you have come down to us from a former generation. D. Webster.

er jewels. Isa. lxi. 10. At church, with meek and unaffected grace, His looks adorned the venerable place. Goldsmith.

Dignified, like an aged man; magisterial; venerable. [Archaic] He wrought but some few hours of the day, and then would he seem very grave and ancient. Holland.

being antique; an appearance of ancient origin and workmanship. We may discover something venerable in the antiqueness of the work. Addison.

owe their powers association. Johnson. Why should . . . the holiest words, with all their venerable associations, be profaned Coleridge.

Persons, and, poetically, things, of a like kind. A brotherhood of venerable trees. Wordsworth.

any kind; -- specifically, the precinct of a cathedral or abbey. Closes surrounded by the venerable abodes of deans and canons. Macaulay.

To render venerable or revered; to hallow; to dignify; as, rules or principles consecrated by time. Burke.

be that which we destroy Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy. Shak. Destruction of venerable establishment. Hallam.

erstanding or mind, particularly in old age; the childishness of old age; senility; as, a venerable man, now in his dotage. Capable of distinguishing between the infancy and the dotage of Greek literature. Macaulay.

From a remoter or higher antiquity. Venerable men! you have come down to us from a former generation. D. Webster.

Inspiring with reverential fear; awful' venerable; as, dread sovereign; dread majesty; dread tribunal.

as in solemnity, wisdom, authority, obscurity, ambiguity, dogmatism. They have something venerable and oracular in that unadorned gravity and shortness in the expression. Pope. -- O*rac"u*lar*ly, adv. -- O*rac"u*lar*ness, n.

anciscan order. Find a barefoot brother out, One of our order, to associate me. Shak. The venerable order of the Knights Templars. Sir W. Scott.

A venerable old man; an elder. Also used figuratively. The patriarch hoary, the sage of his kith and the hamlet. Longfellow. The monarch oak, the partiarch of trees. Dryde.

Characteristic of a patriarch; venerable. About whose patriarchal knee Late the little children clung. Tennyson.

tree (Ficus religiosa) of the Buddhists, a kind of fig tree which attains great size and venerable age. See Bo tree. [Written also pippul tree, and pipal tree.]

A philosophical proposition, doctrine, or principle of reasoning. [R.] This, the most venerable, and perhaps the most ancient, of Grecian myths, is a philosopheme. Coleridge.

Worthy of reverence; entitled to respect mingled with fear and affection; venerable. A reverend sire among them came. Milton. They must give good example and reverend deportment in the face of their children. Jer. Taylor.

ghest title to obedience, honor, reverence, or veneration; entitled to extreme reverence; venerable. Such neighbor nearness to our sacred [royal] blood Should nothing privilege him. Shak. Poet and saint to thee alone were given, The two most sacred names of earth and heaven. Cowley.