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PREEMINENCE, n.s. Fr. preeminence; PREEMINENT, adj. Lat. pre and eminence. It has been written, to avoid the junction of ee, preheminence. Excellence; superiority of merit or station: pre-eminent is excellent; superior.

His lance brought him captives to the triumph of Artesia's beauty, such as, though Artesia be amongst the fairest, yet in that company were to have the preeminency. Sidney.

That which standeth on record hath preeminence above that which passeth from hand to hand, and hath no pens but the tongues, no book but the ears of men.

Hooker.

I do invest you jointly with my power, Preeminence, and all the large effects That troop with majesty. Shakspeare. King Lear. The English desired no preeminence, but offered equality both in liberty and privilege, and in capacity of offices and employments.

Hayward. It is a greater preeminence to have life, than to be without it; to have life and sense, than to have life only; to have life, sense, and reason, than to have only life and sense.

Wilkins.

Tell how came I here? by some great maker In goodness and in power preeminent. Milton. Beyond the equator, the southern point of the needle is sovereign, and the north submits his preemi

nence.

Browne.

I plead for the preeminence of epick poetry. Dryden. We claim a proper interest above others, in the preeminent rights of the household of faith. Sprat. Am I distinguished from you but by toils, Superior toils, and heavier weight of cares? Painful preeminence ! Addison's Cato. PREEMPTION, n. s. Lat. praemptio. The right of purchasing before another.

Certain persons, in the reigns of king Edward VI. and queen Mary, sought to make use of this preemption, but, crossed in the prosecution, or defeated in their expectation, gave it over. Carew. PREENGAGE', v. a. Pra and engage. PREENGAGEMENT, n. s. To engage by precedent ties or contracts: the noun substantive corresponding.

Men are apt to think that those obediences they pay to God shall, like a preengagement, disannul all after-contracts made by guilt. Decay of Piety.

The opinions, suited to their respective tempers, will make way to their assent, in spite of accidental preengagements.

Glanville.

My preengagements to other themes were not unknown to those for whom I was to write. Boyle. To Cipseus by his friends his suit he moved, But he was preengaged by former ties. Dryden.1 As far as opportunity and former preengagements will give leave. Collier of Frendship. The world has the unhappy advantage of preengaging our passions at a time when we have not reflection enough to look beyond the instrument to the hand whose direction it obeys. Rogers's Sermons. PREEXIST, v. a. > Lat. præ and existo. To exist beforehand: the noun-substantive

PREEXISTENCE, n. s.
PREEXISTENT, adj.
and adjective corresponding.

If thy preexisting soul,
Was formed at first with myriads more

It did through all the mighty poets roll. Dryden.

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being of one thing before another. Thus a cause PRE-EXISTENCE is a priority of being, or the is in nature pre-existent to its effect. The Peripatetics, though they maintained the eternity of the world, were likewise dogmatical in their opinion that the universe was formed, actuated, and governed, by a sovereign intelligence. Mr. Hume's speculations also, on this abstruse and arduous subject, had a greater tendency to dissipate its gloom than that philosopher himself could imagine. The pre-existence of the human soul to its corporeal vehicle had been from time immemorial a prevailing opinion among the Asiatic sages, and from them was perhaps transferred by Pythagoras to the philosophy of the Greeks; but his metempsychosis is too trivial either to be seriously proposed or refuted. Nevertheless, from the sentiments of Socrates concerning the immortality of the soul, delivered in his last interview with his friends, it is obvious that the tenet of pre-existence was a doctrine of the Platonic school. But their hypothesis was totally unsupported by fact, except the solitary pretence of Pythagoras, that his soul had formerly animated the body of Euphorbus; a fable evidently invented to support his doctrine of transmigration. After the Christian religion had been considerably diffused, and warmly combated by its philosophical antagonists, the same doctrine was resumed and taught at Alexandria, by Platonic proselytes, not only as a topic constituent of their master's philosophy, but as an answer to those formidable objections which had been deduced from the doctrine of original sin, and from the vices which stain, and the calamities which disturb human life. For the human bation had already attained the capacity of moral beings introduced by them to the theatre of proagents; as their crime therefore was voluntary, their punishment might be just.

The word has also been used with regard to the divinity of our Saviour. The Arians, who allowed the subordinate divinity of our Saviour, believed him pre-existent to all time, and before all worlds; but the Socinians, who esteemed his nature, as well as his person, merely human, insisted that before his incarnation he was only pre-existent in the divine idea, not in nature or person.

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If there be not a tolerable line in all these six, the prefacer gave me no occasion to write better. Dryden.

If this proposition, whosoever will be saved, be restrained only to those to whom it was intended, the Christians, then the anathema reaches not the heathens, who had never heard of Christ: after all, I am far from blaming even that prefatory addition to the creed.

ld. • Before I enter upon the particular parts of her character, it is necessary to preface that she is the only child of a decrepid father. Spectator.

It is lamentable to behold with what lazy scorn many of the yawning readers in our age, now-a-days, travel over forty or fifty pages of preface and dedica tion (the usual modern stint) as if it were so much Latin.

Thou art rash,

And must be prefaced into government.

Swift,

Southern.

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The PREFECT, in ancient Rome, was one of the chief magistrates who governed in the absence of the kings, consuls, and emperors. This power was greatest under the emperors. chief care was the government of the city, taking cognizance of all crimes committed therein, and within 100 miles. He judged capitally and finally, and even presided in the senate. He had the superintendance of the provisions, building, and navigation.

The PREFECT OF THE PRÆTORIUM was the leader of the pretorian bands destined for the emperor's guards, consisting, according to Dion, of 100,000 men. This officer, according to Suetonius, was instituted by Augustus, and usually taken from among the knights. By the favor of the emperors his power grew very considerable; to reduce which, Constantine divided the prefecture of the prætorium into four prefectures, and each of these again he subdivided into civil and

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PREFERABLY, adv.

PREFERENCE, n. s. PREFER'MENT.

To regard with superior esteem or attention; taking above,

before, and to, before the object postponed; to advance; exalt; raise; exhibit; offer or propose solemnly: preferable is eligible before some other thing or person; the adverb and noun substantive corresponding: preference is, the act of preferring; electing; esteeming or raising one thing before another: preferment, advancement; promotion; place of honor or advantage; particularly a church living.

If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy. Psalms.

He that cometh after me is preferred before me; for he was before me.

John i. 15.

In honour preferring one another. Romans.
I, when my soul began to faint,

My vows and prayers to thee preferred:

The Lord my passionate complaint, Even from his holy temple, heard. Sandys. It may worthily seem unto you a most shameful thing, to have preferred an infamous peace before a most just war. Knolles.

I'll move the king

To any shape of thy preferment, such
As thou'lt desire. Shakspeare. Cymbeline.'
They flatly disavouch

To yield him more obedience or support, And as t'a perjured duke of Lancaster, Their cartel of defiance they prefer. Daniel. The greater good is to be preferred before the less, and the lesser evil to be endured rather than the greater. Wilkins. By the recommendation of the earl of Dunbar, he was preferred to the bishoprick of Coventry and Litchfield. Clarendon.

O spirit, that dost prefer

Before all temples the' upright heart. Milton. I shall give an account of some of those appropriate and discriminating notices wherein the human body differs, and hath preference above the most perHale.

fect brutal nature.

All which declare a natural preferment of the one Browne. unto the motion before the other. the preference due to this or that sort of poetry. Dryden

Leave the criticks on either side to contend about

All preferments should be placed upon fit men. L'Estrange.

The stronger ties we have to an unalterable pursuit of happiness, which is greatest good, the more are we free from any necessary compliance with our desire, set upon any particular, and then appearing preferable good, till we have duly examined it.

Locke.

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Even in such a state as this, the pleasures of virtue would be superior to those of vice, and justly preferable. Atterbury. How came he to chuse a comick preferably to the tragick poets; or how comes he to chuse Plautus preferably to Terence? Dennis.

The Romanists were used to value the latter equally with the former, or even to give them the preference. Waterland. A secret pleasure touched Athena's soul, To see the pref'rence due to sacred age Regarded.

Pope's Odyssey. He spake, and to her hand preferred the bowl.

Pope. Princes must, by a vigorous exercise of that law, make it every man's interest and honour to cultivate religion and virtue, by rendering vice a disgrace, and the certain ruin to preferment or pretensions.

Swift.

We know your prudence, Sir William, and I should be sorry to stop your preferment. Junius. PREFIG'URATE, or PREFIGURE, v. a. PREFIGURATION, n. s. antecedent representation.

Lat. pre and figuro. To show by antecedent representation:

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Such piety, so chaste use of God's day, That what we turn to feast; she turned to pray, And did prefigure here in devout taste, The rest of her high sabbath, which shall last. Donne.

If shame superadded to loss, and both met together, as the sinner's portion here, perfectly prefiguring the two saddest ingredients in hell, deprivation of the blissful vision, and confusion of face, cannot prove efficacious to the mortifying of vice, the church doth give over the patient. Hammond.

The variety of prophecies and prefigurations had their punctual accomplishment in the author of this institution. Norris.

The same providence that hath wrought the one will work the other; the former being pledges, as well as prefigurations, of the latter. Burnet.

PREFINE', v. a. Fr. prefinir; Lat. prafinio. To limit beforehand.

He, in his immoderate desires, prefined unto himself three years, which the great monarchs of Rome could not perform in so many hundreds. Knolles.

PREFIX', v. a. & n. s.

Lat. præfigo. To ap

point before hand; settle; put before another thing; a thing so fixed: a particle put before a word to vary its signification.

A time prefix, and think of me at last. Sandys
At the prefixed hour of her awaking,
Came I to take her from her kindred's vault.
Shakspeare.

Whose sins
Full weight must be transferred upon my head;
Yet neither thus disheartened or dismayed,
The time prefixed I waited.

Milton.
Because I would prefix some certain boundary be-
tween them; the old statutes end with king Edward
II., the new or later statutes begin with king Edward
III.
Hale's Law of England.
It is a prefix of augmentation to many words in
that language.
Browne's Vulgar Errours.
Booth's forward valour only served to show,

He durst that duty pay we all did owe:
The' attempt was fair; but heaven's prefixed hour
Not come.
Dryden.
These boundaries of species are as men, and not as
nature makes them, if there are in nature any such
prefixed bounds.
Locke.

In the Hebrew language the noun has its prefixa and the latter to denote the pronouns possessive and and affixa, the former to signify some few relations,

relative.

Clarke.

Pra and form. To form

PREFORM', v. a. beforehand. Not in use.

If you consider the true cause Why all these things change from their ordinance, Their natures and preformed faculties, To monstrous quality; why you shall find That heaven made them instruments of fear Unto some monstrous state.

Shakspeare. Julius Cæsar. PREGNANT, adj. Į Fr. pregnant; Lat. PREGNANTLY, adv. S prægnans. Teeming; breeding; fertile; full of meaning; evident; free: the adverb corresponding.

Pregnancy is made a tapster, and hath his quick wit wasted in giving reckonings. Shakspeare.

This granted, as it is a most pregnant and unforced position, who stands so eminent in the degree of this fortune as Cassio, a knave very voluble.

Id. Othello. Were 't not that we stand up against them all, 'Twere pregnant, they should square between themselves. Shakspeare.

A most poor man made tame to fortune's blows, Who by the art of known and feeling sorrows, Am pregnant to good pity. Id. King Lear. A thousand moral paintings I can shew, That shall demonstrate these quick blows of fortune More pregnantly than words.

Id. Timon.

He was sent to school, where his pregnancy was advantaged by more than paternal care and industry. Fell.

These knew not the just motives and pregnant grounds with which I thought myself furnished. 'King Charles.

Thou
Dove-like satest brooding on the vast abyss,
And madest it pregnant.

Milton.

His town, as fame reports, was built of old By Danae, pregnant with almighty gold.

Dryden.

The breast is encompassed with ribs, and the belly left free for respiration; and, in females, for that extraordinary extension in the time of their pregnancy. Ray on the Creation,

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An egregious and pregnant instance how far virtue surpasses ingenuity. Woodward's Natural History. Ó detestable passive obedience! did I ever imagine I should become thy votary in so pregnant an inArbuthnot.

stance?

This writer, out of the pregnancy of his invention, hath found out an old way of insinuating the grossest reflections under the appearance of admonitions. Swift's Miscellanies.

PREGNANCY. See MIDWIFERY. PREHNITE, or PRISMATIC PREHNITE, a mineral of which there are two sub-species, the foliated and the fibrous.

1. Foliated. Color apple-green. Massive, in distinct concretions, and sometimes crystallised. Primitive form an oblique four-sided prism of 103° and 77°. Secondary forms, an oblique four-sided table, an irregular eight-sided table, an irregular six-sided table, and a broad rectangular four-sided prism. Shining. Fracture fine grained uneven. Translucent. Hardness from felspar to quartz. Easily frangible. Specific gravity 2-8 to 3.0. It melts with intumescence into a pale-green or yellow glass. It does not gelatinize with acids. Its constituents, according to the analysis of Klaproth, are, silica 43-83, alumina 30-33, lime 18-33, oxide of iron 5-66, water 1.83. It occurs in France, in the Alps of Savoy, and in the Tyrol. It is said to become electric by heating. Beautiful varieties are found in the interior of Southern Africa.

2. Fibrous prehnite. Color light-green. Massive, in distinct concretions, and crystallised in acicular four-sided prisms. Glistening, pearly. Translucent. Easily frangible. Specific gravity 2-89. It melts into a vesicular enamel. It becomes electric by heating. Its constituents, according to Laugier, are, silica 42.5, alumina 28-5, lime 20-44, natron and potash 0-75, oxide of iron 3, water 2. It occurs in veins and cavities in trap-rocks near Beith in Ayrshire, Bishoptown in Renfrewshire, at Hartfield near Paisley, and near Frisky Hall, Old Kilpatrick; in the traprocks round Edinburgh, &c.

PREJUDGE', v. a. Fr. prejuger; Lat. præ and judico. To determine beforehand; generally to condemn beforehand.

If he stood upon his own title of the house of Lancaster, he knew it was condemned in parliament, and prejudged in the common opinion of the realm, and that it tended to the disinherison of the line of York. Bacon's Henry VII. The child was strong and able, though born in the eighth month, which the physicians do prejudge. Bacon.

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Prejudicates the business, and would seem To have us make denial. Shakspeare. Their works will be embraced by most that understand them, and their reasons enforce belief from prejudicate readers.

Browne.

This rule, of casting away all our former prejudicate opinions, is not proposed to any of us to be practised at once as subjects or Christians, but merely as philosophers. Watts.

PREJUDICE, n. s. & v. a.
PREJUDICIAL, adj.

Fr. prejudico; Lat. prejudicium. Prepossession; judgment formed without examination; used for prepossession either in favor of any thing or against it; and sometimes (but not properly) with to before that which the prejudice is against; mischief; hurt; detriment: to prejudice is to fill with unexamined notions or opinions; to obstruct; injure; hurt: prejudicial, obstructed; or possessed by opposite opinions; contrary; opposite; hurtful.

lar nation can lawfully prejudice the same by any The strength of that law is such, that no particutheir several laws and ordinances, more than a man, by his private resolutions, the law of the whole commonwealth wherein he liveth.

Hooker.

What one syllable is there, in all this, prejudicial any way to that we hold ? Id.

Neither must his example, done without the book, prejudice that which is well appointed in the book. Whitgifte.

I have not spoke one the least word,
That might be prejudice of her present state,
Or touch of her good person.

Shakspeare. Henry VIII. Factions carried too high and too violently, is a sign of weakness in princes, and much to the preju dice of their authority and business.

Bacon.

'Tis a sad irreverence, without due consideration, to look upon the actions of princes with a prejudicial eye. Holyday. The king himself frequently considered more the person who spoke, as he was in his prejudice, than the council itself that was given.

Clarendon.

His going away the next morning with all his troops was most prejudicial and most ruinous to the king's affairs. Id.

My comfort is, that their manifest prejudice to my cause will render their judgment of less authority.

Dryden.

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One of the young ladies reads while the others are at work; so that the learning of the family is not at all prejudicial to its manufactures.

Id.

Half pillars wanted their expected height, And roofs imperfect prejudiced the sight. Prior. A state of great prosperity, as it exposes us to va

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Hear him but reason in divinity, And, all-admiring, with an inward wish You would desire the king were made a prelate. Shakspeare.

The archbishop of Vienna, a reverend prelate, said one day to king Lewis XI. of France: Sir, your mortal enemy is dead, what time duke Charles of Burgundy was slain. Bacon.

The presbyter, puff'd up with spiritual pride,
Shall on the necks of the lewd nobles ride,
His brethren damn, the civil power defy,
And parcel out republic prelacy.

Dryden.

Yet Munster's prelate ever be accurst, In whom we seek the German faith in vain. Id. Prelacies may be termed the greater benefices; as that of the pontificate, a patriarchship, an archbishoprick and bishoprick. Ayliffe's Parergon. How many are there, that call themselves protestants, who put prelacy and popery together as terms convertible! Swift.

The king then a wrote a letter to the bishop, in which he complained of the violation of his rights, and the contempt of his authority, charged the prelate with countenancing the late act of disobedience, and required an answer in two days.

Johnson.

PRELIM'INARY, adj. & n. s. Fr. preliminaire; Lat. præ limine. Previous; introductory; proemial something introductory; previous condition or stipulation.

My master needed not the assistance of that preliminary poet to prove his claim; his own majestic mien discovers him to be the king. Dryden.

The third consists of the ceremonies of the oath on both sides, and the preliminaries to the combat. Notes on Iliad.

PRELUDE, n. s. & v. a.`
PRELUDIOUS, adj.
PRELUDIUM, n. s.

French prelude; Latin præludium. A short piece of

music played before a full concert; any thing introductory; to serve as an introduction: preludious is previous; introductory: preludium, a prelude.

That's but a preludious bliss,

Two souls pickeering in a kiss. Cleaveland.
To his infant arms oppose

His father's rebels and his brother's foes;
Those were the preludes of his fate,
That formed his manhood, to subdue
The hydra of the many-headed hissing crew.
Dryden.

Either songster holding out their throats,
And folding up their wings, renew'd their notes,
As if all day, preluding to the fight,
They only had rehears'd, to sing by night.

Id.

Id.

This Menelaus knows, exposed to share With me the rough preludium of the war. The last Georgick was a good prelude to the Eneis, and very well shewed what the poet could do in the description of what was really great.

Addison. One concession to a man is but a prelude to another. Clarissa. My weak essay But sounds a prelude, and points out their prey. Young.

PRELU'SIVE, adj. From prelude. Previous; introductory; proemial.

The clouds

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PREMEDITATE, v. a. & v. n. Į Fr. prePREMEDITATION, n. s. mediter; Lat. premeditor. To contrive; form or conceive PRELATION, n. s. Lat. prælatus. Prefer- beforehand: to think beforehand: premeditation, ence: setting of one above the other.

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forethought; act of meditating beforehand.

Of themselves they were rude, and knew not so much as how to premeditate; the spirit gave them speech and eloquent utterance. Hooker.

Where I have come, great clerks have pur¡ osed To greet me with premeditated welcomes.

Shakspeare.

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