U, the vowel, has two sounds; one clear, expressed at other times by eu, as obtuse; the other close, and approaching to the Italian u, or English oo, as obtund.

  V, the consonant, has a sound nearly approaching to those of b and f. With b it is by the Spaniards and Gascons always confounded, and in the Runick alphabet is expressed by the same character with f, distinguished only by a diacritical point. Its sound in English is uniform. It is never mute.

  Vácancy. n.s. [from vacant.]

  1. Empty space; vacuity.

  How is’t

  That thus you bend your eye on vacancy,

  And with th’ incorporal air do hold discourse? Sh. Hamlet.

  2. Chasm; space unfilled.

  The reader finds a wide vacancy, and knows not how to transport his thoughts to the next particular, for want of some connecting idea. Watt’s Logick.

  3. [Vacance, Fr.] State of a post or employment when it is unsupplied.

  In the vacancy of a bishop, the guardian of the spiritualities was summon’d to parliament in the bishop’s room. Ayliffe.

  4. [Vacances, Fr.] Time of leisure; relaxation; intermission; time unengaged.

  If, sometimes, each other’s eyes we meet,

  Those little vacancies from toil are sweet. Dryd. St. of In.

  The daily intervals of time and vacancies from necessary labour, together with the one day in seven in the christian world, allow sufficient time. Watts.

  5. Listlessness; emptiness of thought.

  When alone, or in company, they sit still without doing any thing, I like it worse; for all dispositions to idleness or vacancy, even before they are habits, are dangerous. Wotton.

  Vácant. adj. [vacant, Fr. vacans, Latin.]

  1. Empty; unfilled; void.

  Why should the air so impetuously rush into the cavity of the receiver, if there were before no vacant room to receive it. Boyle’s Works.

  A better race to bring into their vacant room. Milton.

  2. Free; unencumbered; uncrouded.

  Religion is the interest of all; but philosophy of those only that are at leisure, and vacant from the affairs of the world. More’s Divine Dialogues.

  A very little part of our life is so vacant from uneasinesses, as to leave us free to the attraction of remoter good. Locke.

  3. Not filled by an incumbent, or possessor.

  Lest the fiend invade vacant possession. Milton.

  Others when they allowed the throne vacant, thought the succession should immediately go to the next heir. Swift.

  4. Being at leisure; disengaged.

  They which have the government, scatter the army abroad, and place them in villages to take their victuals of them, as such vacant times as they lie not in camp. Spenser.

  Sir John Berkley was the more vacant for that service, by the reduction of Barnstaple. Clarendon.

  The memory relieves the mind in her vacant moments, and prevents any chasms of thought, by ideas of what is past. Addison.

  5. Thoughtless; empty of thought; not busy.

  The wretched slave,

  Who, with a body fill’d, and vacant mind,

  Gets him to rest, cramm’d with distressful bread. Shakes.

  The duke had a pleasant and vacant face, proceeding from a singular assurance in his temper. Wotton’s Buck.

  Some vain amusement of a vacant soul. Irene.

  To Vácate. v.a. [vaco, Latin.]

  1. To annul; to make void; to make of no authority.

  That after-act vacating the authority of the precedent, tells the world that some remorse touched even Strafford’s most implacable enemies. K. Charles.

  2. To make vacant; to quit possession of.

  3. To defeat; to put an end to.

  He vacates my revenge;

  For while he trusts me, ‘twere so base a part

  To fawn, and yet betray. Dryden.

  Vacátion. n.s. [vacation, Fr. vacatio, Latin.]

  1. Intermission of jurdical proceedings, or any other stated employments; recess of courts or senates.

  Vacation is all that time which passes between term and term, at London. Cowel.

  As these clerks want not their full task of labour during the open term, so there is for them whereupon to be occupied in the vacation only. Bacon Off. of Alienat.

  2. Leisure; freedom from trouble or perplexity.

  Benefit of peace, quiet, and vacation for piety, have rendered it necessary in every christian commonwealth, by laws to secure propriety. Hammond’s Fundamentals.

  Váccary. n.s. [vacca, Latin.] A cow-house; a cow-pasture. Bailey.

  Vacíllancy. n.s. [vacillans, from vacillo, Lat. vacillant, Fr.] A state of wavering; fluctuation; inconstancy. Not much in use.

  I deny that all mutability implies imperfection, though some does, as that vacillancy in human souls, and such mutations as are found in corporeal matter. More’s Divine Dialogues.

  Vacillátion. n.s. [vacillatio, from vacillo, Lat. vacillatior, Fr.] The act or state of reeling or staggering.

  The muscles keep the body upright, and prevent its falling, by readily assisting against every vacillation. Derham.

  Vacuátion. n.s. [vacuus, Latin.] The act of emptying. Dict.

  Vácuist. n.s. [from vacuum.] A philosopher that holds a vacuum: opposed to a plenist.

  Those spaces, which the vacuists would have to be empty, because they are manifestly devoid of air, the plenists do not prove replenished with subtle matter. Boyle.

  Vacúity. n.s. [vacuitas, from vacuus, Lat. vacuité, Fr.]

  1. Emptiness; state of being unfilled.

  Hunger is such a state of vacuity, as to require a fresh supply of aliment. Arbuthnot.

  2. Space unfilled; space unoccupied.

  In filling up vacuities, turning out shadows and ceremonies, by explicit prescription of substantial duties, which those shadows did obscurely represent. Hammond’s Fund.

  He, that seat soon failing, meets

  A vast vacuity. Milton.

  Body and space are quite different things, and a vacuity is interspersed among the particles of matter. Bentley.

  God, who alone can answer all our longings; and fill every vacuity of our soul, should intirely posses our heart. Rogers.

  3. Inanity; want of reality.

  The soul is seen, like other things, in the mirror of its effects: but if they’ll run behind the glass to catch at it, their expectations will meet with vacuity and emptiness. Glanv.

  Vácuous. adj. [vacuus, Lat. vacuë, Fr.] Empty; unfilled.

  Boundless the deep, because I AM who fill

  Infinitude: nor vacuous the space. Milton’s Par. Lost.

  Vácuum. n.s. [Latin.] Space unoccupied by matter.

  Our enquiries about vacuum, or space and atoms, will shew us some good practical lessons. Watts.

  Vade. v.n. [vado, Latin.] To vanish; to pass away. Spenser. A word used in poetry, but not received.

  Be ever gloried here thy sovereign name,

  That thou may’st smile on all which thou hast made;

  Whose frown alone can shake this earthly frame,

  And at whose touch the hills in smoak shall vade. Wotton.

  Vágabond. adj. [vagabundus, low Latin. vagabond, Fr.]

  1. Wandering without any settled habitation; wanting a home.

  Let them pronounce the steep Tarpeian death;

  Vagabond exile: yet I wou’d not buy

  Their mercy at the price of one fair word. Shakes. Cor.

  A vagabond debtor may be cited in whatever place or jurisdiction he is found. Ayliffe’s Parergon.

  2. Wandering; vagrant.

  This common body,

  Like to a vagabond flag upon the stream,

  Goes to, and back, lacquying the varying tide. Shakes.

  Their prayers by envious winds

  Blown vagabond or frustrate. Milton.

  Vágabond. n.s. [from the adj.]

  1. A vagrant; a wanderer, commonly, in a sense of reproach.

  We call those people wanderers and vagabonds, that have no dwelling-place. Raleigh’s Hist. of the World.

  Reduced, like Hannibal, to seek relief

  From court to court, and wander up and down

  A vagabond in Afric. Addison’s Cato.

  2. One that wanders illegally, without a settled habitation.

  Vagabond is a person without a home. Watts.

  Vagáry. n.s. [from vagus, Latin.] A wild freak; a capricious frolick.

  They chang’d their minds,

  Flew off, and into strange vagaries fell,

  As they wou’d dance. Milton’s Par. Lost, b. vi. l. 613.

  Would your son engage is some frolic, or take a vagary, were it not better he should do it with, than without your knowledge? Locke on Education, §97.

  Vaginopénnous. n.s. [vagina and penna, Latin.] Sheath-winged; having the wings covered with hard cases. Vagóus. adj. [vagus, Lat. vague, Fr.] Wandering; unsettled. Not in use.

  Such as were born and begot of a single woman, thro’ a vagous lust, were called Sporii. Ayliffe.

  Vágrancy. n.s. [from vagrant.] A state of wandering; unsettled condition. Vágrant. adj. Wandering; unsettled; vagabond; unfixed in place.

  Do not oppose popular mistakes and surmises, or vagrant and fictitious stories. More’s Divine Dialogues.

  Take good heed what men will think and say;

  That beauteous Emma vagrant courses took,

  Her father’s house, and civil life forsook. Prior.

  Her lips no living bard, I weet,

  May say how red, how round, how sweet;

  Old Homer could only indite

  Their vagrant grace, and soft delight:

  They stand recorded in his book,

  When Helen smil’d, and Hebe spoke. Prior.

  W

  Is a letter of which the form is not to be found in the alphabets of the learned languages; though it is not improbable that by our w is expressed the sound of the Roman v, and the Eolick f. Both the form and sound are excluded from the languages derived from the Latin.

  W is sometimes improperly used in diphthongs as a vowel, for u, view; strew: the sound of w consonant is uniform.

  To Wábble. v.n. [A low, barbarous word.] To shake; to move from side to side.

  If in your work you find it wabble; that is, that one side of the flat inclines to the right or left hand, with soft blows of an hammer set it to rights, and then screw it hard up. Moxon.

  Wad. n.s. [weod hay, Saxon.]

  1. A bundle of straw thrust close together.

  2. Wadd, or black lead, is a mineral of great use and value. Woodward.

  Wádding. n.s. [from wad, vad, Islandick.] A kind of soft stuff loosely woven, with which the skirts of coats are stuffed out. To Wáddle. v.n. [wagghelen, Dutch, to waggle; whence, by a casual corruption, waddle.] To shake, in walking from side to side; to deviate in motion from a right line.

  She could have run and waddled all about. Shakesp.

  The strutting petticoat smooths and levels all distinctions; while I cannot but be troubled to see so many well-shaped, innocent virgins bloated up, and waddling up and down like big-bellied women. Spectator, № 127.

  The farmer’s goose,

  Grown fat with corn and sitting still,

  Can scarce get o’er the barn-door sill,

  And hardly waddles forth to cool

  Her belly in the neighb’ring pool. Swift.

  A dabchick waddles through the copse,

  On feet and wings, and flies, and wades, and hops. Pope.

  Dulness, of business the directing soul,

  To human heads like biass to the bowl;

  Which, as more pond’rous, makes their aim more true,

  Obliquely waddling to the mark in view. Pope.

  To Wade. v.n. [from vadum, Lat. pronounced wadum.]

  1. To walk through the waters; to pass water without swimming.

  We’ll wade to the market-place in Frenchmen’s blood. Sha.

  She waded through the dirt to pluck him off. Shakespeare.

  I am in blood

  Stept in so far, that, should I wade no more,

  Returning were as tedious as go o’er. Shakesp. Macbeth.

  He staid seven days at the Crassus, until a bridge was made for the transporting of his army, for that the river was not to be waded over. Knolles’s Hist. of the Turks.

  Then since fortune’s favours fade;

  You that in her arms do sleep,

  Learn to swim, and not to wade,

  For the hearts of kings are deep. Wotton’s Poems.

  With head, hands, wings, or feet pursues his way,

  And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies. Milton.

  It is hard to wade deep in baths where springs arise. Brown.

  Fowls that frequent waters, and only wade, have as well long legs as long necks; and those that are made for swimming have feet like oars. More’s Divine Dialogues.

  Those birds only wade in the water, and do not swim. More.

  As when a dabchick waddles through the copse

  On feet and wings, he flies, and wades, and hops. Pope.

  2. To pass difficultly and laboriously.

  They were not permitted to enter unto war, nor conclude any league of peace, nor to wade through any act of moment between them and foreign states, unless the oracle of God, or his prophets, were first consulted with. Hooker, b. iii.

  I have waded through the whole cause, searching the truth by the causes of truth. Hooker.

  The substance of those controversies whereunto we have begun to wade, be rather of outward things appertaining to the church, than of any thing wherein the being of the church consisteth. Hooker, b. iii.

  Virtue gives herself light, through darkness for to wade. Fairy Queen, b. i.

  I should chuse rather with spitting and scorn to be tumbled into the dust in blood, bearing witness to any known truth of our Lord; than, by a denial of those truths, through blood and perjury wade to a sceptre, and lord it in a throne. South.

  ’Tis not to my purpose to wade into those bottomless controversies, which, like a gulph, have swallowed up so much time of learned men. Decay of Piety.

  The dame

  Now try’d the stairs, and wading through the night,

  Search’d all the deep recess, and issu’d into light. Dryden.

  The wrathful God then plunges from above,

  And where in thickest waves the sparkles drove,

  There lights, and wades through fumes, and gropes his way,

  Half-sing’d, half-stifl’d. Dryden.

  Simonides, the more he contemplated the nature of the Diety, found that he waded but the more out of his depth, and that he lost himself in the thought. Addison.

  Wafer. n.s. [wafel, Dutch.]

  1. A thin cake.

  WIfe, make us a dinner; spare flesh, neither corn;

  Make wafers and cakes, for our sheepe must be shorne. Tusser.

  Poor Sancho they persuaded that he enjoyed a great dominion, and then gave him nothing to subsist upon but wafers and marmalade. Pope.

  2. The bread given in the eucharist by the Romanists.

  That the same body of Christ should be in a thousand places at once; that the whole body should lie hid in a little thin wafer; yet so, that the members thereof should not one run into another, but continue distinct, and have an order agreeable to a man’s body, it doth exceed reason. Hall.

  3. Paste made to close letters.

  Waft. n.s. [from the verb.]

  1. A floating body.

  From the bellowing east oft the whirlwind’s wing

  Sweeps up the burthen of whole wintry plains,

  In one wide waft. Thomson’s Winter.

  2. Motion of a streamer. Used as a token or mean of information at sea.

  To Waft. v.a. [probably from wave.]

  1. To carry through the air, or on the water.

  A braver choice of dauntless spirits,

  Than now the English bottoms have waft o’er,

  Did never float upon the swelling tide. Shakespeare.

  Our high admiral

  Shall waft them over with our royal fleet. Shakespeare.

  Whether cripples, who have lost their thighs, will not sink but float; their lungs being able to waft up their bodies, which are in others overpoised by the hinder legs, we have not made experiment. Brown’s Vulgar Errours.

  Nor dares his transport-vessel cross the waves,

  With such whose bones are not compos’d in graves:

  A hundred years they wander on the shore;

  At length, their penance done, are wafted o’er. Dryden.

  Lend to this wretch your hand, and waft him o’er

  To the sweet banks of yon forbidden shore. Dryden.

  From hence might first spring that opinion of the vehicles of spirits; the vulgar conceiving that the breath was that wherein the soul was wafted and carried away. Ray.

  They before wafted over their troops into Sicily in open vessels. Arbuthnot on Coins.

  In vain you tell your parting lover,

  You wish fair winds may waft him over:

  Alas! what winds can happy prove,

  That bear me far from what I love? Prior.

  Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul,

  And waft a sigh from Indus to the pole. Pope.

  2. To beckon; to inform by a sign of any thing moving.

  To Waft. v.n. To float.

  It wafted nearer yet, and then she knew,

  That what before she but surmis’d, was true. Dryden.

  Those trumpets his triumphant entry tell,

  And now the shouts waft near the citadel. Dryden.

  Wáftage. n.s. [from waft.] Carriage by water or air. Not in use.

  What ship of Epidamnum stays for me? —

  — A ship you sent me to, to hire waftage. Shakespeare.

  I stalk about her door,

  Like a strange soul upon the Stygian banks,

  Staying for waftage. Shakesp. Troilus and Cressida.

  Wáfter. n.s. [from waft.] A passage boat. Ainsworth.

  Wáfture. n.s. [from waft.] The act of waving. Not in use.

  You answer’d not;

  But with an angry wafture of your hand

  Gave sign for me to leave you. Shakesp. Julius Cæsar.

  Wag. n.s. [wœʒan, Saxon, to cheat.] Any one ludicrously mischievous; a merry droll.

  Cupid the wag, that lately conquer’d had

  Wise counsellors, stout captains puissant;

  And ty’d them fast to lead his triumphs bad,

 

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