pnugues/EB7 huggingface dataset:
DEFLAGRATION, in Chemistry, the kindling or setting fire to a salt or mineral, either alone, or mixed for the purpose with a sulphureous substance, in order to purify it.
DEFLECTION, the turning of any thing aside from its course by some adventitious or external cause. The word is often applied to the tendency of a ship to deviate from her true course by means of currents, or the like, which turn her out of her right way. It is likewise applied by astronomers to the tendency of the planets to deviate from the line of their projection, or the tangent of their orbit.

Deflection of the Pays of Light, a property which Dr Hook observed in 1675, and gave an account of before the Royal Society in March the same year. He says he found it different from both reflection and refraction, and that it was made perpendicularly towards the surface of the opaque body. This is the same property which Sir Isaac Newton calls inflection.
DEFOSSION (Defossio'), the punishment of burying alive, inflicted amongst the Romans on vestal virgins guilty of incontinency. It is also a custom among the Hungarians to inflict this punishment on women convicted of adultery. Heretics were likewise punished in this manner.
DEGENERATION, or Degenerating, in general, denotes the growing worse, or losing some valuable qualities of which a thing was formerly possessed. Some naturalists have been of opinion, that things are capable of degenerating into quite a distinct species, but this is chimerical. All that happens in the degeneration of a plant, for instance, is the losing its usual beauty, colour, smell, or the like, a circumstance entirely owing to its being planted in an improper soil, climate, or situation.
DEGREE, in Geometry, a division of a circle, including a three hundred and sixtieth part of its circumference.

Degree of Latitude. See Latitude. Degree of Longitude. See Longitude.

A degree of the meridian on the surface of the globe has been variously determined by various observers. Mr Picart measured a degree in the latitude of 49° 2P, and found it equal to 57,060 French toises. But the French mathematicians, who examined Mr Picart’s operations, assure us that the degree in that latitude is 57,183 toises. Our countryman, Mr Norwood, measured the distance between London and York, and found it 905,751 English feet; and finding the difference of latitudes 2° 28′, determined the quantity of one degree to be 367,196 English feet, or 69 English miles and 288 yards. Maupertuis measured a degree in Lapland, in the latitude of 66° 20 , , and found it 57,438 toises. A degree was likewise measured at the equator by other French mathematicians, and found to contain 56,767∙8 toises. Whence it appears that the earth is not a sphere, but an oblate spheroid.

Degree, in the civil and canon law, denotes an interval in kinship, by which proximity and remoteness of blood are computed.

Degrees, Academical. See Universities. Degrees, in Music, are the little intervals of which the concords or harmonical intervals are composed.
DEHINDAH, a town of Hindustan, in the Nizam’s territories, in the province of Berar, forty miles south-west from Elli¢hpoor. Long. 77. 47. E. Lat. 20. 53. N.
DEIPHON, in fabulous history, a brother of Triptolemus, son of Celeus and Metanira. When Ceres travelled over the world, she stopped at his father’s court, and undertook to nurse him and bring him up. In order to reward the hospitality of Celeus, the goddess began to make his son immortal, and every evening she placed him on burning coals to purify him from whatever mortal particles he still possessed. The uncommon growth of Deiphon astonished Metanira, who wished to see what Ceres had done to make him so vigorous. But she became frightened to see her son on burning coals, and the shrieks which she uttered having disturbed the mysterious operations of the goddess, Deiphon perished in the flames.
DEISCAL, in the ancient British customs, the name of a ceremony originally used in the druidícal worship, and retained in many places down to a very late period, as a civil ceremony towards persons of particular distinction. The temples of the ancient Britons were all circular; and the druids, in performing the public offices of their religion, never neglected to make three turns round the altar, accompanied by all the worshippers. This practice was so habitual to the ancient Britons, that it continued in some places many ages after the druids and their religion were both destroyed. In the Scottish islcs, the vulgar never come to the ancient sacrificing and fire-hallowing cairns, but they walk three times round them, from east to west, according to the course of the sun. This sanctified tour, or round by the south, is called deiscal, from deas or dess, the right hand, and soil or sul, the sun; the right hand being ever next the heap or cairn. In the same isles it is the custom and fashion of the people to testify their respect for their chieftains, the proprietors of their several isles, and other persons of distinction, by performing the deiscal round them in the same manner. A gentleman giving an account of his reception in one of the Western Islands, of which he was proprietor, describes the ceremony of the deiscal in this manner: “One of the natives would needs express his high esteem for my person, by making a turn round about me, sun-ways, and at the same time blessing me, and wishing me all happiness. But I bid him let alone that piece of homage, telling him I was sensible of his good meaning towards me. But this poor man was very much disappointed, as were also his neighbours; for they doubted not but this ancient ceremony would have been very acceptable to me; and one of them told me that this was a thing due to my character from them as to their chief and patron, and that they could not, and would not, fail to perform it.”
DEISM, the doctrine or belief of the deists. Deism, from Θiος, God, is properly used to denote natural religion, as comprehending those truths which have a real foundation in reason and nature; and in this sense it is so far from being opposed to Christianity, that it is one great design of the gospel to illustrate and enforce it. Thus some of the deistical writers have affected to use it. But deism more commonly signifies that system of religion, relating both to doctrine and practice, which every man may discover for himself by the mere force of natural reason, independently of all revelation, and exclusive of it; and this religion, Dr Tindal and others pretend, is so perfect, as to be incapable of receiving any addition or improvement even from divine revelation.
DEITY, Godhead, a common appellation given to God, and also by the poets applied to the heathen gods and goddesses.
DEJANIRA, in fabulous history, daughter of Oeneus, King of Aetolia, and wife of Hercules. The centaur Nessus having endeavoured to ravish her, was slain by Hercules with a poisoned arrow. Nessus, when dying, gave his bloody tunic to Dejanira, assuring her that it was a sovereign remedy to cure her husband if ever he proved unfaithful. Some time afterwards, Dejanira thinking she had reason to suspect his fidelity, sent him the tunic, which he had no sooner put on than he was seized with the most excruciating torments. Being unable to support his pains, he retired to Mount Oeta, and erecting a pile of wood, set fire to it, and threw himself into the flames, upon which Dejanira killed herself in despair.
DEJECTION, in Astrology, is applied to the planets when in their detriment, as astrologers speak, that is, when they have lost their force or influence, as is pretended, by reason of their being in opposition to some others which check and counteract them; or it is used when a planet is in a sign opposite to that in which it has its greatest effect or influence, which is called its exaltation. Thus, the sign Aries being the exaltation of the sun, the opposite sign Libra is its dejection.
DELAOUD, a town of Hindustan, belonging to the Mahrattas, in the province of Malwah, twenty-four miles north from Bopal. Long. 77. 26. E. Lat. 23. 36. N.
DELDEN, a city in the circle of Ahnelo, of the province Overyssel, in the Netherlands, containing 3875 inhabitants.
DELEGATE, in a general sense, a deputy or commissioner appointed for a specific purpose.

Delegates, commissioners appointed by the king under the great seal, to hear and determine appeals from the ecclesiastical court.

Court of Delegates, the great court of appeal in all ecclesiastical causes. These delegates are appointed by the king’s commission under his great seal, issued out of chancery, in order to represent his royal person, and to hear all appeals to him made by virtue of the statute 25 Henry VIII. c. 19. This commission is usually composed of lords spiritual and temporal, judges of the courts at Westminster, and doctors of the civil law. Appeals to Rome were always looked upon by the English nation, even in the times of popery, with an evil eye, as being contrary to the liberty of the subject, the honour of the crown, and the independence of the realm, and were first introduced, in very turbulent times, in the sixteenth year of King Stephen; at the same period, as Sir Henry Spelman observes, that the civil and canon laws were first imported into England. But in a few years afterwards, in order to obviate this growing practice, the constitutions made at Clarendon on account of the disturbances raised by Archbishop Becket and other zealots of the holy see, expressly declared that appeals in causes ecclesiastical ought to lie from the archdeacon to the diocesan, from the diocesan to the archbishop of the province, and from the archbishop to the king; and that they were not to proceed any further without special license from the crown. But the unhappy advantage which was given in the reign of King John, and his son Iĭénry III. to the encroaching power of the pope, ever vigilant to improve all opportunities of extending his jurisdiction to Britain, at length rivetted so strongly the custom of appealing to Rome in causes ecclesiastical, that it never could be thoroughly broken off till the grand rupture happened in the reign of Henry VIII. when all the jurisdiction usurped by the pope in matters ecclesiastical was restored to the crown, to which it had originally belonged; so that the statute 25 Henry VIII. was in fact only declaratory of the ancient law of the realm. But in case the king himself be a party in any of these suits, the appeal does not then lie to him in chancery, which would be absurd, but, by the 24 Henry VIII. c. 12, to all the bishops of the realm, assembled in the upper house of convocation.
DELETERIOUS, an appellation given to things of a destructive or poisonous nature.
DELEYTOSA, a town of Spain, in the province of Estremadura. It is situated on the south of the Tagus, near the bridge of Arzobispo, to which the allies retreated after the battle of Talavera.
DELFSHAVEN, a market-town in the circle of Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, with a good harbour on the right bank of the Maas, in which the Delft vessels lie. It carries on great fisheries for herrings and stock-fish, and has large distilleries for gin. The inhabitants amount to 2680.
DELFZYL, a fortified city of the province Groningen, in the Netherlands. It stands at the junction of the Fi-vel with the Ems, contains 3103 inhabitants, and has considerable trade, and extensive occupation in fishing.
DELIA, in Antiquity, a festival celebrated every fifth year in the island of Delos, in honour of Apollo. It was first instituted by Theseus, who on his return from Crete placed at Delos a statue which he had received from Ariadne. At the celebration they crowned the statue of the god with garlands, appointed a choir of music, and exhibited horse races. They afterwards led a dance, in which they'imitated by their motions the various windings of the Cretan labyrinth, from which Theseus had extricated himself with Ariadne’s assistance. There was another festival of the same name yearly celebrated by the Athenians at Delos, and also instituted by Theseus, who, when going to Crete, made a vow that if he returned victorious, he would yearly visit in a solemn manner the temple of Delos. The persons employed in this annual procession were called Deliastae and Theori ; and the ship which had carried Theseus, and had been carefully preserved by the Athenians, was called Theoria and Delias. During this festival it was unlawful to put to death any malefactor, and on that account the life of Socrates was prolonged for thirty days.

Delia, a surname of Diana, because she was supposed to have been born in Delos.
DELIACAL Problem, a celebrated problem among the ancients, concerning the duplication of the cube.
DELIBAMENTA, in Antiquity, a libation to the infernal gods, always offered by pouring downwards.
DELIBERATIVE, an appellation given to a branch of rhetoric, employed in proving a proposition, or in convincing an assembly that it ought to be put in execution.

To have a deliberative voice in an assembly is to have a right to give one’s advice and vote therein. In councils the bishops have deliberative voices; but those beneath them have only consultative voices.
DELIQUESCENCE, in Chemistry, signifies the property which certain bodies have of attracting moisture from the air, and thereby becoming liquid.
DELIQUIUM, or Deliquium Animi (from delinquo, to swoon), a swooning or fainting away; called also syncope, lipothymia, lipopsychia, eclysis, and asphyxia. Deliquium (from deliquesco, to dissolve), in Chemistry, is the dissolution or melting of a salt by suspending it in a moist cellar. Salt of tartar, or any fixed alkali, placed in a cellar or other cool and moist situation, and in an open vessel, resolves or runs into a kind of liquor called by the older chemists oil of tartar per deliquium.
DELIRIUM (from deliro, to rave or talk idly). When the ideas excited in the mind do not correspond with external objects, but are produced by the change induced on the sensorium, the patient is said to be delirious.
DELITZSCH, a circle in the Prussian province of Sax-pny, extending over 308 square miles, or 197,120 English acres, comprehending three cities or towns and 174 villages, with 34,514 inhabitants. The capital, of the same name, on the Lober, is a fortified town, containing 499 houses and 2953 inhabitants.
DELLAMCOTTA, a fortress of Northern Hindustan, in the province of Bootan. It is situated on a range of lofty mountains, which rises about a mile and a half above the plains of Bengal, and commands the principal pass into Bootan. It was stormed by the British troops in 1773, which so alarmed the Booteans that they petitioned for peace. The fortress was then restored to them.
DELMENHORST, one of the circles into which the duchy of Oldenburg, in Germany, is divided. It extends over 380 square miles, and contains 28,460 inhabitants, who subsist by agriculture. The chief town, of the same name, is situated on the river Delme, and contains 242 houses, with 1510 inhabitants.
DELPHINIA, in Antiquity, feasts which the inhabitants of Aegina celebrated in honour of Apollo, surnamed Delphinius, as is pretended, because he assumed the form of a dolphin, in order to conduct Castilius and his colony from the isle of Crete to the Sinus Crissoeus Delphinium, one of the courts of judicature of the Athenians, which derived its name from the proximity of the place where they held their assemblies to the temple of Apollo Delphinius.
DELPHINIUS, in Astronomy, a constellation of the northern hemisphere, the stars of which are ten in Ptolemy’s catalogue, in Tycho’s the same number, in Hevelius’s fourteen, and in Flamsteed’s eighteen.
DELPHOS, or Castri as it is most frequently named by the inhabitants, a wretched village in the province of Livadia, consisting of about seventy houses, which occupy the site of the ancient city of Delphi. The remains of the gymnasium, stadium, and other buildings, are still extant in its vicinity; but except these, and the stories connected with them, it has now little to recommend it to the notice of travellers beyond the splendid prospect which it commands of the surrounding country.
DELTA is a part of Lower Egypt, included in the space between the branches of the Nile and the Mediterranean Sea. The ancients called it the Isle of Delta, because it is in the shape of a triangle, like the Greek letter of that name. It is about a hundred and thirty miles along the coast from Damietta to Alexandria, and seventy on the sides from the place where the Nile begins to divide itself. It is the most fruitful country in all Egypt, but the fertility is chiefly owing to the periodical inundations of the river Nile. The principal towns on the coast are Damietta, Rosetta, and Alexandria.
DEMADES, an Athenian, who, from being a mariner, became a great orator, and appeased Philip by his eloquence, after the famous victory which the Macedonian monarch gained over the Athenians at Chaeronea in the year b. c. 338.
DEMAIN, or Demesne, in Law, is commonly understood to be the lord’s chief manor place, with the lands thereto belonging, which he and his ancestors, time out of mind, have kept in their own manual occupation.
DEMBEA, a very extensive lake, situated in the heart of Abyssinia, and supposed to be about 450 miles in circumference. It contains many islands, one of which is of considerable size, and is made a place of confinement for state prisoners. The numerous streams which descend from the mountains of Damot and Gojam flow into this lake. The Bahr-el-Azrek, the great river of Abyssinia, and often supposed to be the real Nile, falls into this lake on the west, and issues out again on the south-east; and it is remarked, that the stream may be distinguished through the whole of its passage across this immense body of water.

Dembea, a province of Abyssinia, which includes all the territory surrounding the great lake bearing its name. On the north it comprehends that fertile tract in which Gondar, the capital, is situated. On the east it embraces Foggora, Dara, and Alata, and on the west the lands about Waindaga and Dingleber. The whole region is fruitful, and beautifully varied by mountains and plains.
DEMBO, an extensive district in the south-eastern part of the kingdom of Congo, in Africa. It has been described as divided into the districts of Aembo, Angongo, and Quingengo, but very little is known about it.
DEMESNE. See Domain.
DEMETRIA, a festival in honour of Ceres, called by the Greeks Demeter. The votaries of the goddess lashed themselves with whips made of the bark of trees. The Athenians celebrated a festival of the same name in honour of Demetrius Poliorcetes.
DEMI (formed from dimidium), a word used in composition with other words to signify half. DEMi-Attici, boroughs or larger villages of Attica. The Athenian tribes were distinguished into Demi. Homer, in his catalogue, distinguishes the Athenians by the appellation of Demos. When Theseus prevailed on them to quit the country and to settle at Athens, they still continued to frequent the demi, and to perform there their several religious ceremonies.

DEMi-Gorge, in Fortification, is that part of the polygon which remains after the flank is raised, and which stretches from the curtain to the angle of the polygon. It is half of the vacant space or entrance into a bastion.

Demi- Quaver, a note in music, two of which are equal to a quaver.

D emi- Semiquaver, in music, the shortest note, two of them being equal to a semiquaver.
DEMISE, in Law, is applied to an estate either in fee simple, fee tail, or for a term of life or years; and so it is commonly taken in many writs. The king’s death is in law termed the demise of the king.

Demise and Redemise, denote a conveyance where there are mutual leases made from one to another of the same land, or something out of it.
DEMIURGE (from br i μιος, which denotes a public servant, and ssyov, work), in the mythology of the eastern philosophers, was one of the Aeons employed by the supreme Deity in the creation of the world. He is represented as claiming dominion over the new world he had formed, and totally excluding the supreme Deity from all concern in it.
DEMMIN, a city of the Prussian Pomeranian province of Stettin, situated on the river Peene, and containing 391 houses, with 3968 inhabitants. It carries on some shipping trade.
DEMOCRACY (from bτ↑μος, people, and xgaruν, to command or govern), the same with a popular government, in which the supreme power is lodged in the hands of the people. Such were the governments of Rome and Athens of old; but the most perfect example of democracy is afforded by the United States of North America at the present day, the government of which, for the security it gives, the good order it preserves, the small burdens it imposes, and the judgment with which its foreign and domestic policy has been conducted, deserves to be considered as one of the best and wisest in the world.
DEMOCRITUS, one of the greatest philosophers of antiquity, was born at Abdera, a town of Thrace, about the 80th Olympiad, that is, about 460 years before Christ. His father, says Valerius Maximus, was able to entertain the whole army of Xerxes; and Diogenes Laertius adds, upon the testimony of Herodotus, that the king, in requital, presented him with some Magi and Chaldeans. From these Magi and Chaldeans Democritus received the rudiments of his education; and from them also, whilst yet a boy, he learned theology and astronomy. He next applied to Leucippus, and acquired from him a knowledge of the system of atoms and a vacuum. When his father died, the three sons, for there were so many of them, divided the estate. Democritus made choice of that part which consisted in money, as being, though the least share, the most convenient for travelling; and it is said that his portion amounted to above a thousand talents, or about L.20,000 sterling. His extraordinary inclination for the sciences and for knowledge induced him to travel into all parts of the world where he hoped to find learned men. He went to visit the priests of Egypt, from whom he learned geometry; he consulted the Chaldean and the Persian philosophers; and it is said thåt he penetrated even into India and Ethiopia, to confer with the gymnosophists. In these travels he wasted his substance, after which, at his return, he was obliged to be maintained by his brother; and if he had not given proofs of the greatest understanding, and thereby procured for himself the highest honours, and the strongest interest of his country, he would have incurred the penalty of that law which denied interment in the family sepulchre to those who had wasted their patrimony. After his return from his travels, he lived at Abdera, and governed there in a most [7:7:709]absolute manner, by means of his consummate wisdom. The magistrates of that city made him a present of five hundred talents, and erected statues to him even in his lifetime; but being naturally more inclined to contemplation than delighted with public honours and employments, he withdrew into solitude and retirement. Democritus incessantly laughed at human life as a continued farce, and he carried this so far that the inhabitants of Abdera thought him mad, and sent Hippocrates to cure him; but that celebrated physician having discoursed with the philosopher, told the Abderians that he had a great veneration for Democritus, and that, in his opinion, those who esteemed themselves the most healthy were the most distempered. Democritus died, according to Diogenes Laertius, in the 361st year before the Christian era, aged a hundred and nine years. It is said that he put out his eyes, in order that he might meditate more profoundly on philosophical subjects; but this is by no means probable. He was the author of many books, which are lost, but from which Epicurus borrowed his philosophy.