the |
1. art. Definite grammatical article that implies necessarily that an entity it articulates is presupposed; something already mentioned, or completely specified later in that same sentence, or assumed already | |
I’m reading the book. (Compare I’m reading a book.) | |
The street in front of your house. (Compare A street in Paris.) | |
The men and women watched the man give the birdseed to the bird. | |
2. art. Used before a noun modified by a restrictive relative clause, indicating that the noun refers to a single referent defined by the relative clause. | |
The street that runs through my hometown. | |
3. art. Used before an object considered to be unique, or of which there is only one at a time. | |
No one knows how many galaxies there are in the universe. | |
God save the Queen! | |
4. art. Used before a superlative or an ordinal number modifying a noun, to indicate that the noun refers to a single item. | |
That was the best apple pie ever. | |
5. art. Added to a superlative or an ordinal number to make it into a substantive. | |
That apple pie was the best. | |
6. art. Introducing a singular term to be taken generically: preceding a name of something standing for a whole class. | |
7. art. Used before an adjective, indicating all things (especially persons) described by that adjective. | |
Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable. | |
8. art. Used to indicate a certain example of (a noun) which is usually of most concern or most common or familiar. | |
No one in the whole country had seen it before. | |
I don't think I'll get to it until the morning. | |
9. art. Used before a body part (especially of someone previously mentioned), as an alternative to a possessive pronoun. | |
A stone hit him on the head. (= “A stone hit him on his head.”) | |
10. art. When stressed, indicates that it describes an object which is considered to be best or exclusively worthy of attention. | |
That is the hospital to go to for heart surgery. | |
11. adv. 1=With a comparative ormore and a verb phrase, establishes a parallel with one or more other such comparatives. | |
The hotter the better. | |
The more I think about it, the weaker it looks. | |
The more money donated, the more books purchased, and the more happy children. | |
It looks weaker and weaker, the more I think about it. | |
12. adv. 1=With a comparative, and often withfor it, indicates a result more like said comparative. This can be negated withnone. | |
It was a difficult time, but I’m the wiser for it. | |
It was a difficult time, and I’m none the wiser for it. | |
I'm much the wiser for having had a difficult time like that. | |
proprietary |
1. adj. Of or relating to property or ownership. | |
proprietary rights | |
2. adj. Owning something; having ownership. | |
the proprietary class | |
3. adj. Created or manufactured exclusively by the owner of intellectual property rights, as with a patent or trade secret. | |
The continuous profitability of the company is based on its many proprietary products. | |
4. adj. Nonstandard and controlled by one particular organization. | |
a proprietary extension to the HTML standard for Web page structure | |
5. adj. Privately owned. | |
a proprietary lake; a proprietary chapel | |
6. adj. (of a person) Possessive, jealous, or territorial. | |
7. n. A proprietor or owner. | |
8. n. A body of proprietors, taken collectively. | |
9. n. The rights of a proprietor. | |
10. n. A monk who had reserved goods and belongings to himself, notwithstanding his renunciation of all at the time of profession. | |
class |
1. n. A group, collection, category or set sharing characteristics or attributes. | |
The new Ford Fiesta is set to be best in the 'small family' class. | |
That is one class-A heifer you got there, sonny. | |
Often used to imply membership of a large class. | |
This word has a whole class of metaphoric extensions. | |
2. n. (sociology) A social grouping, based on job, wealth, etc. In Britain, society is commonly split into three main classes; upper class, middle class and working class. | |
3. n. The division of society into classes. | |
Jane Austen's works deal with class in 18th-century England. | |
4. n. Admirable behavior; elegance. | |
Apologizing for losing your temper, even though you were badly provoked, showed real class. | |
5. n. (education, and un) A group of students in a regularly scheduled meeting with a teacher. | |
The class was noisy, but the teacher was able to get their attention with a story. | |
6. n. A series of classes covering a single subject. | |
I took the cooking class for enjoyment, but I also learned a lot. | |
7. n. A group of students who commenced or completed their education during a particular year. A school class. | |
The class of 1982 was particularly noteworthy. | |
8. n. A category of seats in an airplane, train or other means of mass transportation. | |
I used to fly business class, but now my company can only afford economy. | |
9. n. (taxonomy) A rank in the classification of organisms, below phylum and above order; a taxon of that rank. | |
Magnolias belong to the class Magnoliopsida. | |
10. n. Best of its kind. | |
It is the class of Italian bottled waters. | |
11. n. (set theory) A collection of sets definable by a shared property. | |
The class of all sets is not a set. | |
Every set is a class, but classes are not generally sets. A class that is not a set is called a proper class. | |
12. n. (military) A group of people subject to be conscripted in the same military draft, or more narrowly those persons actually conscripted in a particular draft. | |
13. n. (object-oriented) A set of objects having the same behavior (but typically differing in state), or a template defining such a set. | |
an abstract base class | |
14. n. One of the sections into which a Methodist church or congregation is divided, supervised by a class leader. | |
15. v. To assign to a class; to classify. | |
I would class this with most of the other mediocre works of the period. | |
16. v. (intransitive) To be grouped or classed. | |
17. v. To divide into classes, as students; to form into, or place in, a class or classes. | |
18. adj. (Irish, British, slang) great; fabulous | |