naturally from combustible bodies, and artificially by many chemical processes. Upon its first discovery it was styled gas sylvestre, from its being produced by burning charcoal: from its acrid properties it has obtained the name of aerial acid, and cretaceous acid; from its noxious qualities it has been called mephitic air, or mephitic gas; and, in the new chemical nomenclature, it is now called carbonic acid gas. See AIR, CARBONIC ACID, and CHEMISTRY. FIZ'GIG, n. s. A kind of dart or harpoon with which seamen strike fish. Can'st thou with fizgigs pierce him to the quick, Or in his skull thy barbed trident stick? Sandys. Job. FLAB'BY, adj.? Teut. flabbe (a fly-flap); FLAB'ILE. SItal. fluppo, fuppo; Lat. flaccus. Yielding; easily shaken or wafted to and fro. Paleness, a weak pulse, palpitations of the heart, flabby and black flesh, are symptoms of weak fibres. Arbuthnot. Pulls out the rags contrived to prop Her flabby dugs, and down they drop. FLACCID, adj. FLACCID'ITY, n. s. The bowing and inclining the head is found in the great flower of the sun: the cause I take to be is, that the part against which the sun beateth waxeth more faint and flaccid in the stalk, and thereby less able to support the flower. Swift. Lat. flaccidus (à flaccus) Limber; weak; lax. Bacon. They whose muscles are weak or flaccid, are unapt to pronounce the letter r. Holder. The surgeon ought to vary the diet as he finds the fibres are too flaccid and produce funguses, or as they harden and produce callosities. Arbuthnot. There is neither fluxion nor pain, but flaccidity joined with insensibility. Wiseman's Surgery. FLACCUS (Caius Valerius), an ancient Latin poet, of whom we have very imperfect accounts remaining. He wrote a poem on the Argonautic expedition; of which, however, he did not live to finish the eighth book, dying at about thirty years of age. John Baptista Pius, an Italian poet, completed the eighth book of the Argonautics; and added two more, from the fourth of Apollonius; which supplement was first added to Aldus's edition in 1523. FLACOURTIA, in botany, a genus of plants of the monœcia class, and icosandria order. Male CAL. five-parted: coR. none: stamens numerous. Female CAL. many-leaved: COR. none; germ superior; styles five to nine; berry manycelled. Species one; a thorny shrub of Madagascar. FLAG, v. n., v. a. & n. s. FLAG-OFFICER, Saxon Fleog, Fleogan (to fly); Teut. (Old) flaggeren, to be loosened. To hang loose or free; metaphorically to grow dejected; spiritless; feeble; to droop: as a verb active to suffer, to droop or become feeble: as a substantive, the ensign of a ship or regiment; a water plant with a largebladed leaf: a flag-officer is the commander of a squadron: flag-ship, that in which the commander of a squadron sails: flag-staff, the staff on which the flag is fixed: flaggy is lax; 1mber; weak, in tension or taste. She took an ark of bulrushes, and laid it in the flags by the river's brink. Exodus ii. 3. Can bulrushes but by the river grow? Can flags there flourish where no waters flow? Sandys. He hangs out as many flags as he descryeth vessels; square, if ships; if gallies, pendants. Id. His flaggy wings, when forth he did display, Were like two sails, in which the hollow wind Is gathered full, and worketh speedy way. Faerie Queene. These flags of France that are advanced here, Before the eye and prospect of your town, Have hither marched to your endamagement. Shakspeare. The jades That drag the tragick melancholy night, Who with their drowsy, slow, and flagging wings Clip dead men's graves. Id. Henry VI. Democracies are less subject to sedition than where there are stirps of nobles: for, if men's eyes are upon the persons, it is for the business sake as fittest, and not for flags or pedigree. Bacon. Graft an apple-cion upon the stock of a colewort, and it will bear a great flaggy apple. Id. for if the words be but becoming and signifying, and Beds of cotton wool hung up between two trees, the middle, men, wives, and children lie together. not far from the ground; in which, flagging down in Let him be girt Abbot. Milton. With all the grisly legion that troop Forget their hatred, and consent to fear. Waller. It keeps those slender and aerial bodies separated and stretched out, which otherwise, by reason of their flexibleness and weight, would flag or curl. Boyle's Spring of the Air. The interpretation of that article about the flag, is a ground at pleasure for opening a war. Temple. In either's flag the golden serpents bear, Dryden. Id. That basking in the sun thy bees may lie, And resting there, their flaggy pinions dry. My flagging soul flies under her own pitch, Like fowl in air too damp, and lags along As if she were a body in a body: My senses too are dull and stupified, Their edge rebated: sure some ill approaches. Id. Don Sebastian. The duke, less numerous, but in courage more, On wings of all the winds to combat flies: His murdering guns a loud defiance roar, And bloody crosses on his flagstaff's rise. Dryden. His stomach will want victuals at the usual hour, either fretting itself into a troublesome excess, or flagging into a downright want of appetite. Locke. Cut flag roots, and the roots of other weeds. Mortimer's Husbandry. Fame, when it is once at a stand, naturally flags and languishes. Addison's Spectator. Her grandfather was a flag-officer. Addison. As well as Cupid, Time is blind: Take heed, my dear, youth flies apace; Soon must those glories of thy face The fate of vulgar beauty find: |