In the first ages, when the great souls, and masterpieces of human nature, were produced, men sained by a noble simplicity of behaviour. Addison. 1. Chief excellence. Beating up of quarters was his masterpiece. Clarendon. Dissimulation was his masterpiece; in which he so much excelled, that men were not ashamed of being deceived but twice by him. Clarendon. MASTERSHIP. n. s. [from master.] 1. Dominion; rule; power. 2. Superiority; pre-eminence. For Python slain he Pythian games decreed, Where noble youths for mastership should strive, To quoit, to run, and steeds and chariots drive. Dryden. ¡. Chief work. Two youths of royal blood, renown'd in fight, The mastership of heav'n in face and mind. 4. Skill; knowledge. You were used Dryden. Chief mast'ry to dissect, With long and tedious havock, fabled knights In battles feign'd. Milton. He could attain to a mastery in all languages, and sound the depths of all arts and sciences. Tillotson. To give sufficient sweetness, a mastery in the language is required: the poet must have a magazine of words, and have the art to manage his few vowels to the best advantage. Dryden. 4. Attainment of skill or power. Locke. The learning and mastery of a tongue being unpleasant in itself, should not be cumbered with other difficulties. MASTFUL. adj. [from mast.] Abounding in mast, or fruit of oak, beech, or chesnut. Some from seeds inclos'd on earth arise, For thus the mastful chesnut mates the skies. Dryden. MASTICATION. n. s. [masticatio, Latin.] The act of chewing. In birds there is no mastication, or comminution of the meat in the mouth; but in such as are not carnivorous it is immediately swallowed into the crop or craw, and thence transferred into the gizzard. Ray on the Creation. Mastication is a necessary preparation of solid aliment, without which there can be no good digestion. Arbuthnot. MASTICATORY. n. s. [masticatoire, Fr.] A medicine to be chewed only, not 'swallowed. Remember masticatories for the mouth. Bacon. Salivation and masticatories evacuate considerably; salivation many pints of phlegm in a day, and very much by chewing tobacco. Floyer. MASTICH. n. s. [mastic, French.] 1. A kind of gum gathered from trees of the same name in Scio. We may apply intercipients upon the temples of mastich; frontals may also be applied. 2. A kind of mortar or cement. Wiseman. As for the small particles of brick and stone, the least moistness would join them together, and turn them into a kind of mastich, which those insects could not divide. Addison. MA'STICOT. n. s. [marum, Latin.] See MASSICOT. ter. Grind your masticot with saffron in gum waPeacham. Masticot is very light, because it is a very clear yellow, and very near to white. Dryden. MA ́STIFF. n. s. mastives, plural. [mastin, Fr. mastino, Italian.] A dog of the largest size; a bandog; dog kept to watch the house. As savage bull, whom too fierce mastives bait, When rancour doth with rage him once engore, Forgets with wary ward them to await, But with his dreadful horns them drives afore. Spenser. When rank Thersites opes his mastiff jaws, We shall hear musick, wit, and oracle. Shaksp When we knock at a farmers door, the first answer shall be his vigilant mastiff. More. Soon as Ulysses near the enclosure drew, With open mouths the furious mastives flew. Pope. Let the mastiffs amuse themselves about at sheep's skin stuffed with hay, provided it will keep them from worrying the flock. Swift. MASTLESS. adj. [from mast.] Bearing no mast. Her shining hair, uncomb'd was loosely spread, A crown of mastless oak adorn'd her head. Dryd. MA STLIN. n. s. [from mesler, Fr. to mingle; or rather corrupted from miscellane.] Mixed corn: as, wheat and rye. Tusser. The tother for one lofe hath twaine Of mastlin, of rie and of wheat. MAT. n. s. [meatre, Sax. matte, German; matta, Latin.] A texture of sedge, flags, or rushes. The women and children in the west of Cornwall make mats of a small and fine kind of bents there growing, which serve to cover floors and walls. Carew's Survey of Cornwall. In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half hung, The floors of plaister, and the walls of dung. To MAT. v. a. [from the noun.] 1. To cover with mats. Pope. Keep the doors and windows of your conservatories well matted and guarded from the pierc ing air. Evelyn's Kalendar. 2. To twist together; to join like a mat. I on a fountain light, Whose brim with pinks was platted; The banks with daffadillies dight, With grass like sleave was matted. Sometimes beneath an ancient oak, Or on the matted grass he lies; Drayton. No god of sleep he did invoke: The stream that o'er the pebble flies, With gentle slumber crowns his eyes. Dryden. He look'd a lion with a gloomy stare, And o'er his eyebrows hung his matted hair. Dryden. The spleen consisteth of muscular fibres, all matted, as in the skin, but in more open work. Grew. MATADORE. n. s. [matador, a murderer, Spanish.] One of the three principal cards in the games of ombre and quadrille, which are always the two black aces, and the deuce in spades and clubs, and the seven in hearts and diamonds. Now move to war her sable matadores, In shew like leaders of the swarthy Moors. MATACHIN. n. s. [Fr.] Pope. An old dance. Who ever saw a matachin dance to imitate fighting: this was a fight that did imitate the matachin; for they being but three that fought, every one had two adversaries striking him who. struck the third. Sidney. MATCH. n. s. [meche, Fr. miccia, Italian; probably from mico, to shine, Latin: surely not, as Skinner conjectures, from the Saxon maca, a companion, because a match is companion to a gun.] 1. Any thing that catches fire; generally a card, rope, or small chip of wood dipped in melted sulphur. Try them in several bottles matches, and see which of them last longest without stench. Bacon. He made use of trees as matches to set Druina a fire. Horvel. Being willing to try something that would not cherish much tire at once, and would keep fire much longer than a coal, we took a piece of match, such as soldiers use. Boyle. 2. [from uaxn, a fight; or from maca, Sax one equal to another.] A contest; a game; any thing in which there is contest or opposition. Shall we play the wantons with our woes, And make some pretty match with shedding tears? Shakspeare. The goat was mine, by singing fairly won. A solema match was made; he lost the prize. Dryden. 3. [from maca, Saxon.] One equal to another; one able to contest with an- : other. Government mitigates the inequality of power, and makes an innocent man, though of the lowest rank, a match for the mightiest of his fellow-subjects. Addison. The old man has met with his match, Spect. The natural shame that attends vice, makes them zealous to encourage themselves by numbers, and form a party against religion: it is with pride they survey their increasing strength, and begin to think themselves a match for virtue. Rogers. 4. One that suits or tallies with another. 5. A marriage. The match Were rich and honourable; besides, the gentle man Is full of virtue, bounty, worth, and qualities, Besceming such a wife as your fair daughter. Shakspeare Love doth seldom suffer itself to be contined by other matches than those of its own making, Bele With him she strove to join Lavinia's hand, But dire portents the purpos'd match withstand. Dryden. 6. One to be married. To She inherited a fair fortune of her own, and was very rich in a personal estate, and was locked upon as the richest match of the west. Claren. MATCH. v. a. [from the noun.] 1. To be equal to. No settled senses of the world can match The pleasure of that madness. Shakspeare O thou, good Kent, how shall I live and work To match thy goodness? life will be too short, And every measure fail me. Shakspeart. 2. To shew an equal. No history or antiquity can match his policies and his conduct. 3. To oppose as equal. 4. Eternal might To match with their inventions they presum'd So easy, and of his thunder made a scorn. Milt n. What though his heart be great, his actions gallant, He wants a crown to poise against a crown, Birth to match birth, and power to balance power. Dryder The shepherd's kalendar of Spenser is not to be matched in any modern language. Dryden. To suit; to proportion. Let poets match their subject to their strength, And often try what weight they can support. Mine have been still Rescommen Rowe. Matcb'd with my birth; a younger brother's hopes. Employ their wit and humour in chusing and matching of patterns and colours. 5. To marry; to give in marriage. Great king, I would not from your love make such a stray, To match you where I hate. Shakspeare Thou dost protest thy love, and would'st it show By matching her, as she would match her foe. Donne Ye, whose high worths surpassing paragon, Those at land that are not matchable with any upon our shores, are of those very kinds which are found no where but in the deepest parts of the sea. Woodward. MATCHLESS. adj. [from match.] Having no equal. 2. 3. This happy day two lights are seen, If you should carry me, or no; And would have hir'd him and his imps, To be your matchmakers and pimps. Hudibras. 2. One who makes matches to burn. MATE. #. s. [maca, Sax. maet, Dutch.] 1. A husband or wife. I that am frail flesh and earthly wight, Unworthy match for such immortal mate, Myself well wote, and mine unequal fate. Spens. 2. A companion, male or female. Go, base intruder! over-weening slave! Bestow thy fawning smiles on equal mates. My competitor Shakspeare. In top of all design, my mate in empire, Shakspeare. You knew me once no mate Damon, behold yon breaking purple cloud; way. Leave thy bride alone; 3. The male or female of animals. Graze the sea-weed their pasture, and through groves Of coral stray. Milton. Pliny tells us, that elephants know no copulation with any other than their own proper Ayliffe. mate. 4. One that sails in the same ship. What vengeance on the passing fleet she pour'd, 5. One that eats at the same table. mate. To MATE. v. a. [from the noun.] 1. To match; to marry. Ensample make of him your hapless joy, Did soon pluck down, and curb'd my liberty. The hind, that would be mated by the lion, Must die for love. To be equal to. Shakspeare. Some from seeds inclcs'd on earth arise, High on the summit of this dubious cliff, Ii' th' way of loyalty and truth, Dare mate a sounder man than Surrey can be, Shakspeare. matter, Fr. matar, Spanish.] To subdue; to confound; to crush. Not in use. That is good deceit Which mates him first, that first intends deceit, My sense she 'as mated, and amaz'd my sight. Why this is strange; go call the abbess hither; I think you are all mated, or stark mad. Shaksp. The great effects that may come of industry and perseverance who knoweth not? For auda city doth almost bind and mate the weaker sort of minds. Bacon. MATERIAL. adj. [materiel, Fr. materialis, Lat.] 1. Consisting of matter; corporeal; not spiritual. When we judge, our minds we mirrors make, Forms of material things do only take, That these trees of life and knowledge were material trees, though figures of the law and the gospel, it is not doubted by the most religious and learned writers. Raleigh. 2. Important; momentous; essential: with to before the thing to which relation is noted. We must propose unto all men certain petitions incident, and very material in causes of this Hooker nature. Hold them for catholicks or hereticks, it is not a thing either one way or another, in this question, material. Hooker. What part of the world soever we fall into, the ordinary use of this very prayer hath, with equal continuance, accompanied the same, as one of the principal and most material duties of honour done to Christ. Hooker. It may discover some secret meaning and intent therein, very material to the state of that government. Spenser. The question is not, whether you allow or disallow that book, neither is it material. Whitgift. He would not stay, at your petitions made, His business more material. Shakspeare. Neither is this a question of words, but infinitely material in nature. Bacon. MAT action was the same, it was formally dif- MATERIALIST. n. s. [from material.] Considering that corporeity could not agree I do not mean, that any thing is separable from a body by fire that was not materially preexistent in it. Boyle. 2. Not formally. Though an ill intention is certainly sufficient to spoil and corrupt an act in itself materially good, yet no good intention whatsoever can rectify or infuse a moral goodness into an act otherwise evil. South. 3. Importantly; essentially. All this concerneth the customs of the Irish very materially; as well to reform those which are evil, as to confirm and continue those which are good. Spenser on Ireland. MATERIALNESS. n. s. [from material.] State of being material. MATERIALS. n. s. [this word is scarcely used in the singular; materiaux, Fr.] The substance of which any thing is made. The West-Indians, and many nations of the Africans, finding means and materials, have been taught, by their own necessities, to pass rivers in a boat of one tree. Raleigh. Intending an accurate enumeration of medical materials, the omission hereof affords some probability it was not used by the ancients. Brown. David, who made such rich provision of materials for the building of the temple, because he had dipt his hands in blood, was not permitted to lay a stone in that sacred pile. South. That lamp in one of the heathen temples the art of man might make of some such material as the stone asbestus, which being once enkindled will burn without being consumed. Wilkins. The materials of that building very fortunately ranged themselves into that delicate order, that it must be a very great chance that parts them. Tillotson. Simple ideas, the materials of all our knowledge, are suggested to, the mind only by sensation and reflection. Locke. Swift. Such a fool was never found, Who pull'd a palace to the ground, Only to have the ruins made Materials for an house decay'd. MATERIATE. adj. [materiatus, Latin.] MATERIATED. Consisting of matter. After long enquiry of things immerse in matter, interpose some subject which is immateriate or less materiate, such as this of sounds, to the end that the intellect may be rectified, and become not partial. Bacon. MATERIATION. n. s. [from materia, Lat.] The act of forming matter. Creation is the production of all things out of MAT nothing; a formation not only of matter but of form, and a materiation even of matter itself. Brown. MATERNAL. adj. [materne, Fr. maternus, Lat.] Motherly; befitting or pertain- The babe had all that infant care beguiles, maternus, Lat.] The character or rela- MAT-FE'LON. n. s. [matter, to kill, and MATHEMATICAL. Į adj. [matkema- The east and west It is as impossible for an aggregate of finites to comprehend or exhaust one infinite, as it is for the greatest number of mathematick points to amount to, or constitute a body. Bogle. I suppose all the particles of matter to be situated in an exact and mathematical evenness. Bentley. MATHEMATICALLY, adv. [from mathematick] According to the laws of the mathematical sciences. We may be mathematically certain, that the heat of the sun is according to the density of the sunbeams, and is reciprocally proportional to the square of the distance from the body of the sun. MATHEMATICIAN. n. s. [mathematicus, One of the most eminent mathematicians of The mathematicks and the metaphysicks MATHESIS. n. s. [palncis.] The doc- Pope. Mad mathesis alone was unconfin'd. Up rose the victor angels, and to arms Miltowz I waste the matin lamp in sighs for thee; The glow-worm shews the matin to be near, MATINS. n. s. [matines, Fr.] Morning worship. The winged choristers began To chirp their mattins. Cleaveland. By the pontifical, no altar is consecrated without reliques; the vigils are celebrated before them, and the nocturn and mattins, for the saints whose the reliques are. Stilling fleet. That he should raise his mitred crest on high, And clap his wings, and call his family To sacred rites; and vex th' etherial powers With midnight mattins, at uncivil hours. Dryd. MATRASS. n.s. [matras, Fr.] A chymical glass vessel made for digestion or distillation, being sometimes bellied, and sometimes rising gradually tapered into a conical figure. Quincy. Protect from violent storms, and the too parching darts of the sun, your pennached tulips and ranunculus's, covering them with matrasses. MATRICE. s. s. [matrix, Lat.] 1. The womb; the cavity where the fetus is formed. Evelyn. If the time required in vivification be of any length, the spirit will exhale before the creature be mature, except it be enclosed in a place where it may have continuance of the heat, and closeness that may keep it from exhaling; and such places are the wombs and matrices of the females. Bacon. 2. A mould; that which gives form to something enclosed. Stones that carry a resemblance of cockles, were formed in the cavities of shells; and these shells have served as matrices or moulds to them. Woodward. MA ́TRICIDE. n. s. [matricidium, Latin.] 1. Slaughter of a mother. Nature compensates the death of the father by the matricide and murther of the mother. Brown. 2. [matricida, Lat. matricide, Fr.] A mother killer. Ainsworth. TO MATRICULATE. v. a. [from matricula: a matrix, quod ea velut matrice contineantur militum nomina. Ainsw.] To enter or admit to a membership of the universities of England; to enlist; to enter into any society by setting down the name. He, after some trial of his manners and learning, thought fit to enter himself of that college, and after to matriculate him in the university. Walton. MATRICULATE. n. s. [from the verb.] A man matriculated. Suffer me, in the name of the matriculates of that famous university, to ask them some plain questions. Arbuthnot. MATRICULATION. n. s. [from matriculate.] The act of matriculating. A scholar absent from the university for five years, is struck out of the matriculation book; and upon his coming de novo to the university, ought to be again matriculated. Ayliffe. MATRIMONIAL. adj. [matrimonial, Fr. from matrimonium, Lat.] Suitable to marriage; pertaining to marriage; connubial; nuptial; hymeneal. If he relied upon that title, he could be but a king at curtesy, and have rather a matrimonial than a regal power, the right remaining in his queen Bacon, So spake domestick Adam in his care, And matrimonial love. Λατίνου Since I am turn'd the husband, you the wite; The matrimonial victory is mine, Which, having fairly gain'd, I will resign. Dryd MATRIMONIALLY. adv. [from matrimo nial] According to the manner or laws of marriage. He is so matrimonially wedded unto his church, that he cannot quit the same, even on the score of going into a religious house. MATRIMONY. Ayliffe. n. s. [matrimonium, Latin.] Marriage; the nuptial state : the contract of man and wife; nuptials. If any know cause why this couple should not be joined in holy matrimony, they are to declare Common Prayer. MATRIX. n. s. [Latin ; matrice, French.] Womb; a place where any thing is generated or formed; matrice. it. If they be not lodged in a convenient matrix, they are not excited by the efficacy of the sun. Brozon. MATRON. 2. s. [matrone, Fr. matrona, Lat.] 1. An elderly lady. Come, civil night, Thou sober-suited matron, all in black. Shaksp She was in her early bloom, with a discretion very little inferior to the most experienced maTatler. trons. 2. An old woman. A matron sage Supports with homely food his drooping age. Pope MATRONAL. adj. [matronalis, Latin.] Suitable to a matron; constituting a matron. He had heard of the beauty and virtuous be haviour of the queen of Naples, the widow of Ferdinando the younger, being then of matronal years of seven and twenty. MATRONLY. adj. [matron and like.] Elderly; ancient. Bacon. The matronly wife plucked out all the brown hairs, and the younger the white. L'Estrang MATRO ́SS. n. s. Matrosses, in the train of artillery, are a sort of soldiers next in degree under the gunners, who assist about the guns in traversing, spurging, firing, and loading them: they carry fire-locks, and march along with the store waggons as a guard, and as assistants, in case a waggon should. break. Bailey. MATTER. n. s. [matiere, Fr. materia, Lat.} 1. Body; substance extended. If then the soul another soul do make, She must some former stuff or matter take, But in the soul there is no matter found. Davits It seems probable to me, that God in the beginning formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, moveable particles, of such sizes and figures, and with such other properties, and in such proportion to space as most conduced to the end for which he formed them; and that those primitive particles being solids, are incomparebly harder than any porous bodies compounded of them, even so very hard as never to wear or break in pieces, no ordinary power being able to divide what God himself made one in the first creation. Newton. Some have dimensions of length, breadth, and |
