They, strangers to the controversial field, Where deists, always foiled, yet scorn to yield, And never checked by what impedes the wise, Believe, rush forward, and possess the prize. Cowper. CONTRUSION, n. s. Latin, contrudere. Thrusting against; pressing together. CONTUMACY, n. s. CONTUMACIOUS, adj. CONTUMACIOUSLY, adv. CONTUMACIOUSNESS, n. s. Fr. contumace; It. Sp. and Lat. contumacia. The French have the verb contumacer, which now signifies to cast for non-appearance; to non-suit; to out-law. Its meaning was formerly far more extensive. Sherwood defines it, to deale stubbornely, be perverse; follow his own will; disobey, or rebel against his superiours; to make a contempt; also to judge, or proceed against, as disobedient, obstinate, rebellious; to punish or censure, a contempt.' In the English words are retained those meanings which the French verb has lost. All of them convey the idea of obstinacy; perverseness; contempt of superior authority. In law, contumacy is a wilful disobedience to any lawful summons or judicial order. Contumacie, presumption, irreverence, pertinacie, vaine glorie, and many other twigges that I cannot Chaucer. Cant. Tales. declare. CONTUMELY, n. s. Fr. contumelie; CONTUME LIOUS, adj. It. Sp. and Lat. CONTUME LIOUSLY, adv. contumelia. RudeCONTUME LIOUSNESS, n. s. ness; contemptuousness; insolence or scurrility of language; tauni; reproach. Contumelious is, affrontive; reproachful; inflicting ignominy; brutal. Than stondeth the sinne of contumelie, or strif and cheste, and battereth and forgeth by vilain's reprevinges. Chaucer. Cant. Tales. If the helm of chief government be in the hands of a few of the wealthiest, then laws, providing for continuance thereof, must make the punishment of contumely and wrong, offered unto any of the common sort, sharp and grievous, that so the evil may be pre vented. Hooker. The people are not wont to take so great offence, when they are excluded from honours and offices, as when their persons are contumeliously trodden upon. Id. The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pang of despised love, the law's delay. Shakspeare's Hamlet. With scoffs and scorns, and contumelious taunts, in open market-place produced they me To be a public spectacle. Id. Henry VI. Fie, lords that you, being supreme magistrates, Thas contumeliously should break the peace. Id. It was undervalued and depressed with some bitterness and contumely. Clarendon. Why should any man be troubled at the contumelies of those, whose judgments deserve not to be valued? Tillotson. As it is in the highest degree injurious to them, so it is contumelious to him. Decay of Piety. Eternal contumely attend that guilty title, which claims exemption from thought, and arrogates to its wearers the prerogative of brutes. Addison. Guardian. In all the quarrels and tumults at Rome, though the people frequently proceeded to rude contumelious language, yet no blood was ever drawn in any popular commotions, till the time of the Gracchi. Swift. This business was not ended, because our dignity was wounded, or because our patience was worn out with contumely and scorn. We had not disgorged one particle of the nauseous doses with which we were so liberally crammed by the mountebanks of Paris, in order to drug and diet us into perfect tameness. Burke. CONTUND, v. a. Fr. contondant; It. & Sp. contundente; Lat. contundere. beat violently; to pound. CONTURBATION, n. s. from con and turba; rúpßn. fusion; disorder. CONTU'SE, v. a. Į To bruise; to Lat. conturbatio, Disturbance; con Fr. contus, contusion; CONTU'SION, n. s. Ital. contuso, contusione; Span. contuso, contusion; from Lat. contundere. To beat together; to bruise without breaking the flesh. The act of bruising or pounding; the state of being bruised or pounded; a bruise. That winter lion, who in rage forgets Aged contusions, and all bruise of time. Shakspeare. Henry VI. Of their roots, barks, and seeds, contused together, and mingled with other earth, and well watered with warm water, there came forth herbs much like the other. Bacon. The bones, in sharp colds, wax brittle; and all conId. tusions, in hard weather are more hard to cure. Take a piece of glass, and reduce it to powder, it acquiring by contusion a multitude of minute surfaces, from a diaphanous, degenerates into a white body. Boyle on Colours. The ligature contuses the lips in cutting them, so that they require to be digested before they can unite, Wiseman, Cowper. Adjoining close to Kilwick's echoing wood, Where oft the bitch fox hides her hapless brood, Reserved to solace many a neighbouring squire, That he may follow them through brake and brier, Contusion hazarding of neck or spine, Which rural gentlemen call sport divine. CONVALE'SCE, v. n. Lat. convalescere. CONVALESCENCE, n. s. The verb, which is CONVALESCENCY, N. S. now obsolete, signihealth. Convalescence and convalescency mean CONVALESCENT, adj. Ofies to be returning to restoration to health; recent recovery from disConvalescent is, being in a recovering state; free from disease, but not yet having recovered strength. ease. And every morn ais colour freshlier came, And every day helped on his convalescence; "Twas well, because health in the human frame Is pleasant, besides being true love's essence. Byron. Don Juan. CONVALLARIA, the lily of the valley, in botany, a genus of the monogynia order, and hexandria class of plants; COR. sexfid: BERRY spotted and trilocular. There are twelve species, of which three are natives of Britain, viz.:-C. Maialis, May lily. C. multiflora, Solomon's seal; and C. polygonatum, sweet-smelling Solomon's seal. They are all plants of considerable beauty, and may easily be propagated by their creeping roots. CONVENÆ, an ancient people of Gallia Narbonensis, said by Pliny to have been originally robbers and slaves, whom Pompey compelled to settle at the foot of the Pyrenees, after the Sertorian war. CONVENE, v. a. & n. CONVENER, n. s. Fr. convenir; It. convenire; Sp. convenir; Latin convenire, from con and venire. To come together, is the primary idea in all this class of words. To convent, says Johnson, is to call before a judge or judicature; and this is, undoubtedly, one of its meanings. But, in our old writers, it has also the sense of convene, an instance of which we have given from Spenser. To convene is, to summon together; to convoke; to cite judicially; to come together; to assemble. Hence convent, conventicle, convention, mean aggregates of persons; persons collected together. Convent is the residence of a body of monks, or nuns. Conventicle is, in its general sense, an assembly; a meeting; but, in its customary sense, an assembly for religious worship, consisting of persons who do not belong to the church establishment; the bigotry of some of our ancestors induced them to attach to it a disgraceful idea, and to persecute those who composed it. See CONVENTICLE. Convention is the act of coming together; union; a contract; something settled by common consent; a provisional agreement; an assembly of persons. In this latter sense, the word has receiyed a blot, from the conduct of the French legislature which bore the name of the convention. Conventional is, stipulated; agreed on by compact; settled by common consent, and not inhering in the nature of the thing. Convenience and conveniency denote, fitness; propriety; commodiousness; ease; accommodation; fitness of time and place; that is, a concurrence, a coming together, of circumstances favorable to doing or enjoying something. Convenient, which is suitable, commodious, takes to or for before the following noun; and Johnson justly observes that perhaps it ought gene CONVENING, n. s. CONVENTICLE, v. a. & n. s. CONVENTION, n. s. But what straunge fortunes unto him befell, He is so meek, wise, and merciable, It behoveth, that the place where God shall be served by the whole church be a publick place, for the avoiding of privy conventicles, which, covered with pretence of religion, may serve unto dangerous practices. Hooker. In things not commanded of God, yet lawful, because permitted, the question is, What light shall shew us the conveniency which one hath above another? Id. Ay, all of you have laid your heads together Id. Henry VI. Id. Merchant of Venice. Hale's Common Law. The ordinary covenants of most conventionary tenants are, to pay due capon and due harvest journeys. Carew's Surrey. All the factious and schismatical people would frequently, as well in the night as the day, convene themselves by the sound of a bell. Clarendon. affections of the conventions, or associations, of several They are to be reckoned amongst the most general particles of matter into bodies of any certain denomiBoyle. nation. There are settled periods of their convening, or a liberty left to the prince for convoking the legislature. Locke. As to his meals, I should think it best that, as much as it can be conveniently avoided, they should not be kept constantly to an hour. For when custom bath fixed his eating to certain stated periods, his stomach will expect victuals at the usual hour, and grow peevish if he passes it. Locke. scatter. Id. In short-sighted men, whose eyes are too plump, the refraction being too great, the rays converge and convene in the eyes, before they come at the bottom. Newton's Opticks. I have read a sermon of a conventual, who laid it down that Adam could not laugh before the fall. Addison's Spectator. If he revoked this plea too, 'twas because he found the expected council was dwindling into a conventicle, a packed assembly of Italian bishops; not a free contention of fathers from all quarters. Atterbury. Health itself is but a kind of temper, gotten and preserved by a convenient mixture of contrarieties. Arbuthnot on Aliments. Public conventions are liable to all the infirmities, follies, and vices of private men. Swift. There was a pair of spectacles, a pocket perspective, and several other little conveniences, I did not think myself bound in honour to discover. Swift's Gulliver's Travels. And now the' almighty father of the gods Convenes a council in the blest abodes. Pope's Stat. They are commanded to abstain from all conventicles of men whatsoever; even, out of the church, to have nothing to do with publick business. Id. Those are called conventual priors, that have the chief ruling power over a monastery. Id. What organ it is that shall declare the corporate mind is so much a matter of positive arrangement, that several states, for the validity of several of their acts, have required a proportion of voices much greater than that of a mere majority. These proportions are so entirely governed by convention, that in some cases the minority decides. Mild was the morn, the sky serene, The jolly hunting band convene, The beagle's breast with ardour burns, Burke. The bounding steed the champaign spurns, Beattie. Thy parliaments adored on bended knees The sovereignty they were convened to please; Whate'er was asked, too timid to resist, Complied with, and were graciously dismissed. Cowper. I seek divine simplicity in him, By curious eyes and judgments ill informed, And this example well may prove Nothing but sound, as is manifest, can perfectly be represented by sound; and beyond this, the resemblance, between the flow of a verse and the idea excited by the words, must be wholly conventional, and not in any degree actual and self-existent. Symmons. Pref. to the Æneis. CONVENER, the title given to the præses of the fourteen deacons of the incorporations, or trades of Edinburgh, from his power of convening the deacons, or the whole incorporations, upon any emergency. He is elected by the fourteen deacons, and the two trades counsellors; wears a gold chain, and is a governor of the Trades Maiden Hospital; but is not ex-officio a member of the ordinary town council; though the magistrates generally appoint him one. CONVENTICLE is a diminutive of convent; denoting, properly, a secret assembly of a part of the monks of a convent, to make a party in the election of an abbot. Hence the word stands for any seditious, or irregular assembly. F. Doucine observes, the occidentals always esteemed the fifth general council an unlawful conventicle. The term is said to have been first applied in England to the schools of Wickliffe, and has been since used to signify the religious assemblies of all who do not conform to the established doctrines and worship of the church of England. By 22 Car. II. cap. 1, it is enacted that if any persons of the age of sixteen years, subjects of this kingdom, shall be present at any conventicle, where there are five or more assembled, they shall be fined 6s. for the first offence, and 10s. for the second: persons preaching incur a penalty of £20. Suffering a meeting to be held in a house, is liable to £20 penalty. Justices of the peace have power to enter such houses, and seize persons assembled, &c. And if they neglect their duty, they forfeit £100. And if any constable, &c. know of such meetings, and do not inform a justice of peace, or chief magistrate, he shall forfeit £5. But the 1st W. & M. cap. 18, ordains, that Protestant dissenters shall be exempted from penalties: though if they meet in a house with the doors locked, barred, or bolted, such dissenters shall have no benefit from that statute. Officers of the government, &c. present at any conventicle, at which there shall be ten persons, if the royal family be not prayed for in express words, shall forfeit £40, and be disabled. 10 Anne, cap. 2. CONVENTION is also a name given to an extraordinary assembly of parliament, or the estates of the realm, held without the king's writ. Of this kind was the convention parliament which Id. restored Charles II. This parliament met above a month before his return, and sat full seven months after his restoration, and enacted several laws Id. still in force, which were confirmed by stat. 13, Car. II. c. 7, and c. 14. Such also was the convention of estates in 1689, who, upon the retreat of king James II., came to a conclusion that he had abdicated the throne, and that the right of succession devolved to king William, and queen Mary; whereupon their assembly expired as a convention, and was converted into a parliament. CONVENTION OF ESTATES, in Scotland, was partly of the nature of a parliament; but differing in this, that the former could only lay on taxes, while parliament could both impose taxes and make laws. CONVENTION OF FRANCE, NATIONAL, the representatives of the French people, who met on the 20th of September, 1792, and among their first acts abolished monarchy in that kingdom. See FRANCE, HISTORY OF CONVENTUS JURIDICI, in Roman antiquity, ourts of justice established in the provinces; with jurisdictions circumscribed within certain limits, whither all who were within the limits of these courts were to repair for justice. CONVERSE, v. n. Fr. converser; CO'NVERSE, n. s. It. conversare; Sp. CONVERSIBLE, adj. conversar; Latin, CONVERSABLY, adv. conversari. To conCONVERSABLENESS, n. s. verse is, to hold CONVERSANT, adj. intercourse with; CONVERSATION, n. s. to be acquainted CONVERSATIVE, adj. with; to talk with; to discourse familiarly, in which case it has on before the thing; to have commerce with one of the opposite sex. Converse is, talk; acquaintance; familiarity. Converse is a word of a more poetical order than conversation, and implies somewhat less of familiarity than the latter. Easy talk, chit-chat, may be called conversation; but can scarcely be dignified with the name of converse. Conversation has the additional meanings of behaviour; mode of living; knowledge by long acquaintance with. Conversant signifies, having a thorough knowledge of; having intercourse with, in which case it is followed by among or with; relating to, in which sense it has about, and formerly had in, after it. Conversable is, having talent for conversing; being communicative. Conversative indicates, relating to social commerce; to public life; not contemplative. Sidney. Whiles thou now in Elysian fields so free, Spenser. The Ruines of Time. Let them make some towns near to the mountain's side, where they may dwell together with their neighbours, and be conversant in the view of the world. Spenser's State of Ireland. The matters wherein church polity is conversant, are the publick religious duties of the church. I will converse with iron-witted fools, Hooker. Shakspeare. Richard III. His apparent, open guilt; Id. I set down, out of long experience in business, and much conversation in books, what I thought pertinent to this business. Go therefore half this day, as friend with friend, Converse with Adam. Milton's Paradise Lost. Gabriel, this day by proof thou shalt behold, Thou, and all angels conversant on earth With man, or men's affairs, how I begin To verify that solemn message. Id. Paradise Regained. Men then come to be furnished with fewer or more simple ideas from without, according as the objects they converse with afford greater or less variety. Locke. Is is easy to observe, that many young men continue longer in the thought and conversation of schoolboys than otherwise they would, because their parents kept them at that distance, and in that low rank, by all their carriage to them. Id. having conversed with a man? If it were a husband, says she, the next day; if a stranger, never. Guardian. That fire and levity which makes the young scarce conversible, when tempered by years, makes a gay old age. Addison. By experience and conversation with these bodies, a man may be enabled to give a near conjecture at the metallic ingredients of any mass. Woodward. Formed by thy converse happily to steer From grave to gay, from lively to severe. Pope. For him who lonely loves To seek the distant hills, and there converse With nature. Thomson's Summer. In a small degree, and conversant in little things, vanity is of little moment. When full grown, it is the worst of vices, and the occasional mimic of them all. It makes the whole man false. It leaves nothing sincere or trust-worthy about him. His best qualities are poisoned and perverted by it, and operate exactly as the worst. Burke Blest be the day I 'scaped the wrangling crew; From Pyrrho's maze, and Epicurus' sty; And held high converse with the godlike few, Who to the enraptured heart, and ear, and eye, Teach beauty, virtue, truth, and love, and melody. Beattie. In conversation too, let us always mind what is saying and doing around us, and never give the company ground to suspect, that our thoughts are elsewhere. Attention is a chief part of politeness. Id Cowper. Words learned by rote, a parrot may rehearse, But talking is not always to converse; Not more distinct from harmony divine, The constant creaking of a country sign. MARIA. Oh, he has done nothing; but 'tis for what he has said-his conversation is a perpetual libel on all his acquaintance. Sheridan, To climb the trackless mountain all unseen, With the wild flock that never needs a fold; Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean; This is not solitude; 'tis but to hold Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores Byron. Childe Harold unrolled. state, or substance, to another; to change one proposition for another; to undergo a change. The agent in any of these acts is the converter; the patient is the convert or convertite; and the change which he has undergone is his conversion. In algebra, conversion of equations is the reducing of a fractional equation into an integral one. Convert and convertite are, however, applied only to persons. Convertible signifies, capable of being changed; transmutable; so much alike that one is used for the other. In geometry, a proposition is said to be the converse of another, when, after drawing a conclusion from something first proposed, we proceed to suppose what had been before concluded, and to draw from it what had been supposed. Thus, if two sides of a triangle be equal, the angles opposite to those sides are also equal; the converse of the proposition is, that if two angles of a triangle be equal, the sides opposite to those angles are also equal. Conversely means, with change of order; in a contrary order; reciprocally. Then will I teach transgressors thy ways, and sinners shall be converted unto thee. Psalm li, 13. The abundance of the sea shall be converted unto thee, the forces of the Gentiles shall come unto thee. Isa. Ix. 5. They passed through Phenice and Samaria, declaring the conversion of the Gentiles. Acts xv. 4. He which converteth the sinner from the error of his way, shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins. James v. 20. And so ferforth she gan our lay declare, That she the Constable, er that it was eve, Converted, and on Crist made him beleve. Chaucer. Cant. Tales. What maketh this but Jupiter the king, For theft and riot they ben convertible, Id. Spenser. Faerie Queene. The love of wicked friends converts to fear: That fear, to hate. Shakspeare. Richard II. He thence departs a heavy convertite ; She there remains a hopeless cast-away. Id. Rape of Lucrece, Artificial conversion of water into ice, is the work of a few hours; and this of air may be tried by a month's space. Bacon. As fire converts to fire the things it burns; As we our meats into our nature change. Davies. Nor would I be a convertite so cold, Donne. As not to tell it. They rub out of it a red dust which converteth into worms, which they kill with wine. Sandy's Travels. Crystal will callify into electricity, and convert the needle freely placed. Browne's Vulgar Errours. Minerals are not convertible into another species, though of the same genus; nor reducible into another genus. Harvey. The papists cannot abide this proposition converted : all sin is a transgression of the law; but every transgression of the law is sin. Hale. |