descriptio

dēscriptĭo, ōnis (in MSS. and edd. often confounded with discriptio, v. infra), f. [describo] (freq. in Cic.), a marking out, delineation, copy, transcript: in concreto.

Lit. (rare):

eadem caeli descriptio,

Cic. Rep. 6, 22; cf. id. ib. 1, 14:

explicate descriptionem imaginemque tabularum,

id. Verr. 2, 2, 77 fin. In plur.:

numeris aut descriptionibus aliquid explicare,

id. Tusc. 1, 17:

volutarum,

sketches, drawings, Vitr. 3, 3:

orbis terrarum,

maps, id. 8, 2 et saep. —Far more freq.,

Trop.

A representation, delineation, description:

nominis brevis et aperta descriptio,

Cic. Inv. 2, 18:

dilucida locorum,

Quint. 9, 2, 44:

regionum,

id. 4, 3, 12:

Siciliae,

id. 11, 3, 164:

convivii luxuriosi,

id. 8, 3, 66 et saep.—In rhetor., the delineating of character, Cic. Top. 22, 83; id. de Or. 3, 53, 205; Quint. 9, 1, 31; cf. Auct. Her. 4, 39, 51.—

A proper disposition, order, arrangement:

via descriptionis atque ordinis (in oratione),

id. de Or. 2, 9, 36:

aedificandi,

id. Off. 1, 39;

legionum et auxiliorum,

Suet. Tib. 30:

descriptio centuriarum classiumque non erat,

Liv. 4, 4, 2:

populi,

Vulg. 2 Reg. 24, 9.—In plur.:

descriptiones temporum,

id. Ac. 1, 3, 19 et saep. (Descriptio is often found in MSS. and edd. in the sense of distribution, division; but here the proper form is discriptio, [p. 556] e. g. Cic. Rep. 2, 22; id. de Off. 1, 7, 21 saep.)

* * *

(n.) = authority record

Ex. This standard specifies the requirements for a generalized exchange format which will hold records describing all forms of material capable of bibliographic descriptio as well as related records such as authority records.

* * *

SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology

[br]

[br]

[br]

Born into a family of Scottish landowners, at the early age of 13 years Napier went to the University of St Andrews in Fife, but he apparently left before taking his degree. An extreme Protestant, he was active in the struggles with the Roman Catholic Church and in 1594 he dedicated to James VI of Scotland his Plaine Discovery of the Whole Revelation of St John, an attempt to promote the Protestant case in the guise of a learned study. About this time, as well as being involved in the development of military equipment, he devoted much of his time to finding methods of simplifying the tedious calculations involved in astronomy. Eventually he realized that by representing numbers in terms of the power to which a "base" number needed to be raised to produce them, it was possible to perform multiplication and division and to find roots, by the simpler processes of addition, substraction and integer division, respectively.

A description of the principle of his "logarithms" (from the Gk. logos, reckoning, and arithmos, number), how he arrived at the idea and how they could be used was published in 1614 under the title Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio. Two years after his death his Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Constructio appeared, in which he explained how to calculate the logarithms of numbers and gave tables of them to eight significant figures, a novel feature being the use of the decimal point to distinguish the integral and fractional parts of the logarithm. As originally conceived, Napier's tables of logarithms were calculated using the natural number e(=2.71828…) as the base, not directly, but in effect according to the formula: Naperian logx= 107(log e 107-log e x) so that the original Naperian logarithm of a number decreased as the number increased. However, prior to his death he had readily acceded to a suggestion by Henry Briggs that it would greatly facilitate their use if logarithms were simply defined as the value to which the decimal base 10 needed to be raised to realize the number in question. He was almost certainly also aware of the work of Joost Burgi.

No doubt as an extension of his ideas of logarithms, Napier also devised a means of manually performing multiplication and division by means of a system of rods known as Napier's Bones, a forerunner of the modern slide-rule, which evolved as a result of successive developments by Edmund Gunther, William Oughtred and others. Other contributions to mathematics by Napier include important simplifying discoveries in spherical trigonometry. However, his discovery of logarithms was undoubtedly his greatest achievement.

[br]

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

aedĭfĭco, āvi, ātum, 1, v. a. [aedesfacio], lit. to erect a building, to build; and in gen., to build, raise, erect, or establish any thing.

Lit.: aedificare cum sit proprie aedem facere, ponitur tamen katachrêstikôs in omni genere constructionis, Fest. p. 13 Müll.; hence in the first signif. for the most part

Absol.:

aedificare diu cogitare oportet,

Cato, R. R. 3, 1:

ecce aedificat,

Plaut. Mil. 2, 2, 56:

ad quem (usum) accommodanda est aedificandi descriptio,

Cic. Off. 1, 39, 138; id. ib. 2, 23, 83:

tribus locis aedifico, reliqua reconcinno,

id. Q. Fr. 2, 6:

lautius, id Leg. 2, 1, 3: belle,

id. Att. 9, 13 al.:

accuratius ad frigora atque aestus vitandos,

Caes. B. G. 6, 22:

diruit, aedificat, mutat quadrata rotundis,

Hor. Ep. 1, 1, 100; so id. S. 2, 3, 308.—

With object:

domum,

Cic. Q. Fr. 2, 4; so Vulg. Exod. 1, 21:

casas,

Hor. S. 2, 3, 247.—

In gen., to build, construct, etc.:

navim,

Plaut. Mer. prol. 87 piscinas, Varr. R. R. 3, 17, 5:

navem,

Cic. Verr. 2, 5, 18:

urbem,

id. ib. 2, 4, 53; so Vulg. Exod. 1, 11:

oppida,

ib. 2 Para. 26, 6:

turrim,

ib. Matt. 21, 3:

murum,

ib. 2 Para. 33, 14:

porticum,

Cic. Dom. 43:

hortos,

id. Att. 9, 13:

equum,

Verg. A. 2, 16:

mundum,

Cic. Tusc. 1, 25:

tot adhuc compagibus altum aedificat caput,

i.e. makes it, by bands and hair ornaments, a high tower, Juv. 6, 501.—

Fig., to build up, establish:

rem publicam,

Cic. Fam. 9, 2.—And (eccl.) in a religious sense, to build up, instruct, edify.

Absol.:

caritas aedificat,

Vulg. 1 Cor. 8, 1:

non omnia aedificant,

ib. ib. 16, 23.—

With object:

semetipsum,

Vulg. 1 Cor. 14, 4:

alterutrum,

ib. 1 Thess. 5, 11.

dīgestĭo, ōnis, f. [id.].

A dividing of food, dissolving, digestion (post-Aug.):

sive concoctio sit illa, sive tantum digestio,

Cels. 1 praef. § 63;

2, 14, § 7: facilis ciborum,

Quint. 11, 3, 19; Capitol. Ver. 4; Sol. 27, 13; in plur., Macr. S. 7, 4.—

An orderly distribution, division, arrangement.

In gen.:

annorum,

Vell. 2, 53 fin.: (Italiae) in literas, i. e. an orderly description (shortly before, descriptio), Plin. 3, 5, 6, § 46.—

Esp., as rhet. t. t., enumeration = merismos, Cic. de Or. 3, 53, 205; Quint. 9, 1, 31; 9, 2, 2; cf. id. 11, 33, 114.

ē-nŭmĕro, āvi, ātum, 1, v. a., to reckon up, count over, count out (class.).

In gen.:

jamne enumerasti id, quod ad te rediturum putes?

Ter. Ad. 2, 2, 28: dies, * Caes. B. C. 3, 105, 2:

peculium,

i. e. to rate, estimate, Plaut. As. 2, 4, 91:

pretium,

to count out, to pay, Cic. Rosc. Am. 46, 133. —

In partic., to enumerate in speaking, to recount, relate (so most freq.):

enumerare possum, quae sit in figuris animantium descriptio partium,

Cic. N. D. 2, 47, 121; cf. Sall. C. 51, 9:

stipendia,

Liv. 3, 58:

proelia,

Nep. Hann. 5, 4:

triumphos et domitas gentes,

Ov. F. 3, 719:

vulnera, oves,

Prop. 2, 1, 44 (with narrare):

plurima fando,

Verg. A. 4, 334:

prolem meorum,

id. ib. 6, 717:

femineos coetus alicui,

Ov. A. A. 1, 254:

Juniam familiam a stirpe ad hanc aetatem ordine,

Nep. Att. 18, 3:

ne de eodem plura enumerando defatigemus lectores,

id. Lys. 2, 1.

fastus, a, um, adj. [perh. root PHA, phaskô, phêmi, fari; lit., in which it is allowed to speak], fasti dies; and more commonly absol.: fasti, ōrum, m. (acc. to the 4th decl. acc. fastus, Varr. ap. Prisc. p. 711 P.; Col. 9, 14, 12; Sil. 2, 10; Sen. Tranq. An. 14, 2; Hor. C. 4, 14, 4 Bentley (dub.); abl. fastibus, Luc. 10, 187), a publicists' t. t., a day on which judgment could be pronounced. on which courts could be held, a court-day (opp. nefasti, v. nefastus; cf. also: feriae, justitium, otium).

Prop.:

ille (dies) nefastus erit, per quem tria verba (DO, DICO, ADDICO) silentur: Fastus erit, per quem lege licebit agi,

Ov. F. 1, 48; Varr. L. L. 6, 4, § 29 sq. Müll. The register of these legal court-days, which for a long time existed only in the archives of the pontifices, was kept from the knowledge of the people, until Cn. Flavius, scribe to the Pontifex Maximus Appius Caecus, posted up a copy in the Forum:

posset agi lege necne, pauci quondam sciebant, fastos enim volgo non habebant,

Cic. Mur. 11, 25; cf.:

(Cn. Flavius) fastos circa forum in albo proposuit, ut, quando lege agi posset, sciretur,

Liv. 9, 46, 5; Plin. 33, 1, 6, § 17; Val. Max. 2, 5, 2.—

Transf.

In gen., an enumeration of all the days of the year, with their festivals, magistrates, events, etc., a calendar, almanac (syn.: annales, historia, res gestae, narratio, fabula): fastorum libri appellantur, in quibus totius anni fit descriptio: fasti enim dies festi sunt, Paul. ex Fest. p. 87, 19 Mull. N. cr.:

ordo ipse annalium mediocriter nos retinet quasi enumeratione fastorum,

Cic. Fam. 5, 12, 5:

cum diem festum ludorum de fastis suis sustulissent,

id. Verr. 2, 4, 67, § 151:

fastos correxit (Caesar),

Suet. Caes. 40:

ut omne tempus... ita in fastos referretur,

id. Aug. 100; cf. id. Tib. 5.—

Esp.

The Fasti consulares, or registers of the higher magistrates, according to their years of service (v. Orelli, Onomast. Tullian. P. III.):

quae (tempora) semel Notis condita fastis Inclusit volucris dies (i. e. fastis consularibus),

Hor. C. 4, 13, 15:

per titulos memoresque fastos,

id. ib. 4, 14, 4; so,

memores,

id. ib. 3, 17, 4:

tempora si fastosque velis evolvere mundi,

id. S. 1, 3, 112:

qui redit in fastos et virtutem aestimat annis, etc.,

id. Ep. 2, 1, 48:

in codicillorum fastis,

Cic. Att. 4, 8, 3:

paginas in annalibus magistratuum fastisque percurrere,

Liv. 9, 18, 12:

ex fastis evellere,

Cic. Sest. 14, 33:

hos consules fasti ulli ferre possunt,

id. Pis. 13, 30.—

Fasti Praenestini a Verrio Flacco ordinati et marmoreo parieti incisi, Suet. Gram. 17; cf. Inscr. Orell. II. p. 379 sq., and the authors there cited; v. also Anthon's Dict. of Antiq. p. 432 sq.—

Fasti, the title of a poem of Ovid, on the Roman festivals, the festival-calendar; which, however, he completed for but six months of the year.

fastus, ūs ( gen. fasti, Coripp. 4, 137), m. [Sanscr. dharshati, to be bold; Gr. thrasus, tharsos; full form farstus], scornful contempt or disdain of others, haughtiness, arrogance, pride ( poet., and in post-Aug. prose; syn.: fastidium, clatio, superbia, arrogantia, insolentia).

Sing.:

tu cave nostra tuo contemnas carmina fastu,

Prop. 1, 7, 25; cf.:

fastus inest pulchris sequiturque superbia formam,

Ov. F. 1, 419:

superbo simul ac procaci fastu,

Plin. 9, 35, 58, § 119:

aspice primum, Quanto cum fastu, quanto molimine circum Spectemus,

Hor. Ep. 2, 2, 93:

tanto te in fastu negas, amice,

i. e. thou withdrawest thyself with so much pride from my society, Cat. 55, 14:

fastus erga patrias epulas,

Tac. A. 2, 2 fin. —

Plur.:

fastus superbi,

Prop. 3 (4), 25, 15; Tib. 1, 8, 75; Ov. M. 14, 762.

fastūs, uum, m., calendar; v. 1. fastus init.