into a deep marsh, from which he could not extricate himself, and perished, with all his army, by the darts of the barbarians, A. D. 251, after a reign of two years.

DECIUS MUS, the name of three patriotic Romans, viz. 1. a celebrated consul, who, after many glorious exploits, devoted himself to the gods manes, for the safety of his country, in a battle against the Latins, about 340 years before the Augustan age. 2. His son, Decius Mus, imitated his example, and devoted himself, in like manner, in his fourth consulship, when fighting against the Gauls and Samnites. 3. His grandson also did the same in the war against Pyrrhus and the Tarentines.

DECK, v. a. & n. s. Sax. decan, decan; DECKER, n. s. S Bel. decken, from Lat. tego, tectum. To cover; to adorn; ornament; dress. A deck is the covering of a ship's hold. His goodly image, liuing euermore

your face,

In the diuine resemblaunce of
Which with your vertues ye embellish more,
And natiue beauty deck with heuenlie grace.

Spenser. Sonnets.

We have also raised our second decks, and given more vent thereby to our ordnance, trying on our nether overloop. Raleigh.

Sweet ornament! that decks a thing divine.

Shakspeare.

The ruder Satyre should go ragged and bare, And show his rougher and his hairy hide, Tho' mine be smooth, and deckt in carelesse pride. Bp. Hall. Defiance to Envy.

Ye mists and exhalations, that now rise From hill or steaming lake, dusky or grey, Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold; In honour to the world's great Author, rise! Whether to deck with clouds the uncoloured sky, Or wet the thirsty earth with falling showers, Rising or falling, still advance his praise. Milton. Now the dew with spangles decked the ground, A sweeter spot of earth was never found.

Dryden.

Besides gems, many other sorts of stones are regularly figured: the amianthus, of parallel threads, as in the pile of velvet; and the selenites, of parallel plates, as in a deck of cards. Grew.

It was intended by the means of these precepts, not to deck the mind with ornaments, but to protect it from nakedness; not to enrich it with affluence, but to supply it with necessaries.

Johnson. Preface to Preceptor. DECK, the planked floors of a ship, which connect the sides together, and serve as different platforms to support the artillery and lodge the men; as also to preserve the cargo from the sea, in merchant-vessels. As all ships are broader at the lower deck than on the next above it, and as the cannon thereof are always heaviest, it is

necessary that the frame of it should be much stronger than that of the others; and, for the same reason, the second, or middle-deck, ought to be stronger than the upper-deck or forecastle. Ships of the first and second rates are furnished with three whole decks, reaching from the stem to the stern, besides a forecastle and a quarterdeck, which extends from the stern to the mainmast; between which and the forecastle, a vacancy is left in the middle, opening to the upper deck, and forming what is called the waist. The inferior ships of the line-of-battle are equipped with two decks and a-half; and frigates, sloops, &c. with one gun-deck and a-half, with a spardeck below to lodge the crew. The decks are formed and sustained by the beams, the clamps, the water-ways, the carlings, the ledges, the knees, and two rows of small pillars, called stanchious, &c. See SHIP-BUILDING.

DECK, FLUSH, implies a continued floor laid from stem to stern, upon one line, without any stops or intervals.

DECK, HALF, a space under the quarter-deck of a ship of war, contained between the foremost bulk-head of the steerage and the forepart of the quarter-deck. In the colliers of Northumberland, the steerage itself is called the halfdeck, and is usually the habitation of the crew.

DECKENDORF, a town of Bavaria, near the Danube. In the year 1633 it was taken by the troops of the duke of Saxe-Weimar, and retaken by the Swedes in 1641. It is twenty-eight miles north-west of Passau, and thirty-eight E.S. E. of Ratisbon. Long. 12° 55′ E., lat. 46° 50' N.

speak with formality or vehemence; to address the passions rather than the judgment. Sometimes a college theme or composition is termed particularly, a declamation.

The cause why declamutions prevail so greatly, is, for that men suffer themselves to be deluded.

age.

Thou mayest forgive his anger, while thou makest use of the plainness of his declamation. Taylor.

He has run himself into his own declamatory way, and almost forgotten that he was now setting up for a moral poet. Dryden.

The splendid declaimings of novices and men of heat. South.

It is usual for masters to make their boys declaim on both sides of an argument. Swift.

Your salamander is a perpetual declaimer against jealousy. Addison. Who could, I say, hear this generous declamator, without being fired at his noble zeal? Tatler:

Dress up all the virtues in the beauties of oratory, and declaim aloud on the praise of goodness.

Watts.

I every week imposed upon myself a task of composing a theme or a declamation in Latin or English. I had great pleasure in lately finding among my papers two of these declamations; there is nothing excellent in either of them, yet I cannot help valuing them, Bishop Watson. DECLAMATION may be defined a speech made in public, in the tone and manner of an oration, uniting the expression of action to the propriety of pronunciation, in order to give the sentiment its full impression upon the mind. See ORATORY. The word is now principally used in a derogatory sense.

DECLARE, va. & v.n.) DECLARABLE, adj. DECLARATION, n. s. DECLARATIVE, adj. DECLARATORY, adj. DECLARATORILY, adv. DECLAREDLY, adv. DECLA'REMENT, n. s. DECLARER,

Fr. declarer; Span. and Port. declarar; Lat. declaro, of de and clarus, clear. To make clear, plain, or well known. As a neuter verb, with for or against, to publish an opinion or reDECLARING, part. solution. That is declarable which is capable of proof: declaration and declarement, the instrument or act of making a thing clear or known: declarative is explanatory declaratorily, in the form of a declaration: declaratory, affirmative, or that which openly expresses a doubtful, obscure sense, or law: declaredly, avowedly. Declaring, as a substantive, is synonymous with declaration. Declare his glory among the heathen.

1 Chron. xvi. 24. Which things, the most part of our old martyrs rather than they would doe, or once kneel or offer up one crumbe of incence before an image, suffered most crewell and terrible deaths, as the histories of them at large do declare.

This is declarable from the best writers. Browne. Crystal will calefy into electricity; that is, into a power to attract straws, or light bodies; and convert the needle freely placed, which is a declarement of very different parts. Id. Andreas Alciatus the civilian, and Franciscus de Cardua, have both declaratorily confirmed the same. Id. Vulgar Errours.

To declare this a little, we must assume that the surfaces of such bodies are exactly smooth. Boyle. The internal faculties of will and understanding decreeing and declaring against them. Taylor.

The sun by certain signs declares, Both when the south projects a stormy day, And when the clearing north will puff the cloud away. Dryden's Virgil.

God is said not to have left himself without witness in the world; there being something fixed in the nature of men, that will be sure to testify and declare for him. South's Sermons.

Thougb wit and learning are certain and habitual perfections of the mind, yet the declaration of them, which alone brings the repute, is subject to a thousand hazards. South.

To this we may add the vox populi, so declarative on the same side. Swift.

A declared gout is the distemper of a gentleman; whereas, the rheumatism is the distemper of a hackneycoachman or chairman, who are obliged to be out at all weathers, and in all hours. Chesterfield.

I have had and used the opportunities of conversing with men of the greatest wisdom and fullest experience in those matters, and I do declare to you most solemnly and most truly, that on the result of this reading, thinking, experience, and communication, I am not able to come to an immediate resolution in favour of a change of the groundwork of our constitution.

:

from deorsum, downwards, and clino, to bind; Gr. Kλvw.-Minsheu. To bend downwards; to bring down; to shun; avoid; sink as a neuter verb, to lean or incline downward; to deviate; to sink; decay. Decline, as well as declension, signifies also the state of decrease, or alteration for the worse; a tendency to a less degree of excellence; descent. Declinable is principally a term of grammar, and expresses that quality of words whereby they can be traced to their roots. Declination, and declinator, are also scientific terms, for which see the articles following:

Neither shalt thou speak in a cause to decline after many, to wrest judgment. Exodus xxiii. 2.

And now fair Phoebus 'gan decline in haste His weary waggon to the western vale. Spenser. The queen, hearing of the declination of a monarchy, took it so ill, as she would never after hear

of his suit.

Bacon.

Sometimes nations will decline so low From virtue, which is reason, that no wrong, But justice, and some fatal curse annexed, Deprives them of their outward liberty. Milton. And nature, which all acts of life designs, Not like ill poets, in the last declines. Denhum. He had wisely declined that argument, though in their common sermons they gave it. Clarendon.

If it should be said that minute bodies are indissoluble, because it is their nature to be so, that would not be to render a reason of the thing proposed, but, in effect, to decline rendering any. Boyle.

That a peccant creature should disapprove and repent of every declination and violation of the rules of just and honest, this right reason, discoursing upon the stock of its own principles, could not but infer. South's Sermons.

Thus then my loved Euryalus appears; He looks the prop of my declining years!

Autumnal warmth declines;

Dryden.

Id.

Ere heat is quite decayed, or cold begun. There is no declination of latitude, nor variation of the elevation of the pole, notwithstanding what some have asserted. Woodward.

Thy rise of fortune did I only wed, From its decline determined to recede. Prior. We may reasonably allow as much for the declension of the land from that place to the sea, as for the immediate height of the mountain. Burnet's Theory. Those fathers lived in the decline of literature.

Swift. Faith and morality are declined among us. Id. God, in his wisdom, hath been pleased to load onr declining years with many sufferings, with diseases, and decays of nature.

Id.

Whatever they judged to be most agreeable or disagreeable, they would pursue or decline. Atterbury.

Supposing there were a declination of atoms, yet will it not effect what they intend; for then they do all decline, and so there will be no more concourse than if they did perpendicularly descend.

Ray.

You decline musa, and construe Latin, by the help of a tutor, or with some English translation. Watts.

There are several ways to know the several planes; but the readiest is by an instrument called a declinatory, fitted to the variation of your place. Moxon.

Declension is only the variation or change of the termination of a noun, whilst it continues to signify the same thing. Clarke's Latin Grammar.

And leaves the semblance of a lover, fixt In melancholy deep, with head declined, And love-dejected eyes.

Thomson.

This praise, O Cheronean sage, is thine!
Why should this praise to thee alone belong?
All else from Nature's moral path decline,
Lured by the toys that captivate the throng.
Beattie.

Statues of glass-all shivered-the long file
Of her dead Doges are declined to dust;
But where they dwelt, the vast and sumptuous pile
Bespeaks the pageant of their splendid trust.

Byron.

DECLINATION, in astronomy, is either north or south, and either true or apparent, according as the real or apparent place of the object is considered. See ASTRONOMY.

DECLIVITY, n. s. Į DECLIVOUS, adj.

Old Fr. declivité; from the Lat. declivis, declino. See DECLINE. Descent; obliquity; downwards; gradual descent, opposed to acclivity.

Rivers will not flow unless upon declivity, and their sources be raised above the earth's ordinary surface, so that they may run upon a descent. Woodward.

I found myself within my depth; and the declivity was so small, that I walked near a mile before I got to the shore. Gulliver's Travels.

And on thy happy shore a temple still,
Of small and delicate proportion, keeps,
Upon a mild declivity of hill,

Its memory of thee; bencath it sleeps
Thy current's calmness.

DECOCT, v. a. DECOCTION, n. s.

Byron.

Fr. decoction; Ital. decoctione; Span. decocion;

DECOCTIBLE, adj. (from Lat. decoctus, of de Decocture, n. s. and coquo, to seethe. To extract the virtues of any thing by boiling, or heat. Shakspeare uses it, barbarously enough, for strengthening by boiling; decoction is the act of boiling to extract the virtue, or the preparation decocted; and the latter seems the meaning also of decocture.

Sena loseth its windiness by decocting; and subtile or windy spirits are taken off by incension or evaporation. Bacon,

In infusion, the longer it is, the greater is the part of the gross body that goeth into the liquor: but in decoction, though more goeth forth, yet it either purgeth at the top, or settleth at the bottom. Bacon. Can sodden water, their barley broth, Decoct their cold blood to such valiant heat?

There she decocts, and doth the food prepare; There she distributes it to every vein; There she expels what she may fitly spare. Davies. The lineaments of a white lily will remain after the strongest decoction. Arbuthnot.

DECOLLATE, v. a. Į Fr. decoller. From DECOLLATION, n. s. Lat. decollatio, de and collum, the neck. To behead; a beheading, or decapitation. Applied also metaphorically

A fine piece (a painting) of a decollated head of St. John the Baptist was shewn to a Turkish Emperor; he praised many things, but he observed that

DECOMPOSE, v. a. Fr. decomposer; DECOMPOS'ITE, adj. Lat. decompono, DECOMPOSITION, n. s. decompositus, of DECOMPOUND, v. a. & adj. de and compono, composui, to COMPOSE, which see. To compound a second time, to dissolve (chemically), seem alike the meaning of both verbs. Decomposite and decompound, as adjectives, mean compounded a second time. Decomposition, the act or practice of so compounding, or a resolution of the parts of things chemically.

Decomposites of three metals, or more, are too long to enquire of, except there be some compositions of them already observed. Bacon.

We consider what happens in the compositions and decompositions of saline particles. Id.

No body should use any compound or decompound of the substantial verbs. Arbuthnot and Pope.

When a word stauds for a very complex idea, that is compounded and decompounded, it is not easy for men to form and retain that idea exactly, Locke.

If the violet, blue, and green be intercepted, the remaining yellow, orange, and red will compound upon the paper an orange; and then if the intercepted colours be let pass, they will fall upon this compounded orange, and, together with it, decompound a white. Newton.

Bees' wax becomes bleached by exposure to the sun and dews in a similar manner as metals become

calcined or rusty, viz., by the water on their surface being decomposed; and hence the inflammable material which caused the colour becomes united with vital air forming a new acid, and is washed away.

Darwin.

In preparing the salt from the brine, there is a refuse part, which is formed by the separation and decomposition of the grosser particles from the pure salt. Sir T. Barnard.

DECOMPOSITION, in chemistry, usually signifies the disunion or separation of the constituent parts of bodies. It differs from mere mechanical division, in that, when a body is chemically decomposed, the parts into which it is resolved are essentially different from the body itself; but though a mechanical force is applied to it ever so long, or if with ever so much violence, the minutest particles into which the body may be reduced, still retain their original nature. Thus, let nitre be reduced to ever so fine a powder, each particle retains the nature of nitre as much as the compounded mass; but, if oil of vitriol is applied, a decomposition takes place, and one of the largest component parts of the nitre rises in the form of a smoking acid spirit, which never could have been suspected to lie hid in the neutral salt. See CHEMISTRY.

DECORATE, a. a.~ DECOR AMENT, n. s. DECORATION, n. s. DECORATER

Fr. decorer; Ital. decorature; from Lat. decoro, of decus, honor. To adorn, beautify, dress,

embellish. Decorament seems synonymous with decoration.

The ensigns of virtues contribute to the ornament of figures; such as the decorations belonging to the liberal arts, and to war. Dryden.

After all, to inherit is not to acquire, to decorate is not to make. Johnson.

DECOROUS, adj. Lat. decorus, decet, DECO'RUM, n. s. it becometh. See DEcORATE. Befitting, becoming, proper, suitable to character or station; therefore decorum is becoming gravity and seemliness of behaviour. If your master

Would have a queen his beggar, you must tell him
That majesty, to keep decorum, must
No less beg than a kingdom.

Shakspeare.

Prior.

Of vice and virtue in the schools, The better sort shall set before 'em A grace, a manner, a decorum. Gentlemen of the army should be, at least, obliged to external decorum: a profligate life and character should not be a means of advancement. Swift.

It is not so decorous, in respect of God, that he should immediately do all the meanest and triflingest things himself, without any inferiour or subordinate minister. Ray.

If the prudence of reserve and decorum dictates silence in some circumstances, in others prudence of a

higher order may justify us in speaking our thoughts.

Burke.

Beattie.

No band of friends or heirs be there, To weep, or wish, the coming blow. No maiden, with disshevelled hair, To feel, or feign, decorous woe. DECORTICATE, v. a. Į Lat. decortico.DECORTICA'TION, n. s. To divest of the bark or husk; to husk; to peel; to strip. Take great barley, dried and decorticated, after it is well washed, and boil it in water, Arbuthnot.

DECOY, v. a. & n. s. From Goth. duck and DECOY'-DUCK, N. S. Skui, or Dut. koey, a and hence to entrap or ensnare generally. The cage. To entrap ducks into a net, or otherwise; decoy-duck is the instrument of lure. See

below.

A stifled smile of stern vindictive joy Brightened one moment Edwin's starting tear, But why should gold man's feeble mind decoy And innocence thus die by doom severe ? Beattie.

DECOY, among fowlers, a place made for catching wild fowl. A decoy is generally made where there is a large sheet of water surrounded with wood, and beyond that a marshy and uncultivated country. As soon as the evening sets in, the decoy rises, as they term it, and the wild fowl feed during the night. The decoy-ducks are fed with hemp-seed, which is thrown over the skreens in small quantities, to bring them forwards into the pipes or canals, and to allure the wild fowl to follow, as this seed floats. There are several pipes, as they are called, which lead up a narrow ditch that closes at last with a funnel net. Over these pipes, which grow narrower from their first entrance, is a continued arch of netting suspended on hoops. It is necessary to have a pipe or ditch for almost every wind that can blow, as upon this circumstance it depends which pipe the fowl will take to; and the decoy-man always keeps on the leeward side of the ducks, to prevent his effluvia reaching their sagacious nostrils. All along each pipe, at certain intervals, are placed skreens made of reeds, so situated, that it is impossible the wild-fowl should see the decoy-man, before they have passed on towards the end of the pipe, where the purse-net is placed. The inducement of the wild-fowl to go up one of these pipes is, because the decoy-ducks trained to this lead the way, either after hearing the whistle of the decoy-man, or enticed by the hemp-seed: the latter will dive under water, whilst the wild-fowl fly on, and are taken in the purse net. It often happens, however, that the wild-fowl are in such a state of sleepiness and dozing, that they will not follow the decoy-duck. Use is then generally made of a dog, who is taught his lesson; he passes backwards and forwards between the reed-skreens, in which are little holes, both for the decoy-man to see, and the dog to pass through; this attracts the eye of the wild-fowl, who, not choosing to be interrupted, advance towards the small and contemptible animal, that they may drive him away. The dog all the time, by the direction of the decoy-man, plays among the screens of reeds, nearer and nearer the purse-net; till at last the man appears behind a screen, and the wild-fowl not daring to pass by him in return, nor being able to escape upwards, on account of the net covering, rush on into the net. Sometimes the dog will not attract their attention, if a red handkerchief, or something very singular, is not put about him. The general season for catching fowls in decoy, is from the end of October till February. Decoys are commonly let at a certain annual rent, and yield large quantities of ducks, wigeons, and teal; but they have been diminished

from Lat. decretum ; qu. Gr. xpivw, to judge. To doom or decide formally or publicly; to make an edict; to establish by law; resolve. A decree is the edict, law, rule, or decision. Decretal, a book of decrees or laws, and particularly of the popes: decretist, he who professedly studies or is skilled in the decretals: decretory, judicial, decisive, final.

When he made a decree for the rain, and a way for the lightning of the thunder. Job xxviii. 26. There went a decree from Cæsar Augustus, that al the world should be taxed, Luke ii. 1. They shall see the end of the wise, and shall not understand what God in his counsel hath decreed of him.

Wisdom iv.