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Gramercy, lovely Lucius, what's the news?

Shakspeare.

GRAMINA, grasses, one of the seven tribes, or natural families, into which all vegetables are distributed by Linnæus in his Philosophia Botanica. They are defined to be plants which have very simple leaves, a jointed stem, a husky calyx termed gluma, and a single seed. This description includes the several sorts of corn as well as grasses. In Tournefort they constitute a part of the fifteenth class, termed apetali; and, in Linnæus's sexual method, they are mostly contained in the second order of the third class, triandria digynia. This numerous and natural family of the grasses has engaged the attention and researches of several eminent botanists; particularly Ray, Monti, Micheli, and Linnæus. M. Monti, in his Catalogus stirpium agri Bono-, niensis, gramina ac hujus modi affinia complectens, printed at Bononia in 1719, divides the grasses from the disposition of their flowers, as Theophrastus and Ray had done before him, into three sections or orders. These are, 1. Grasses having flowers collected in a spike. 2. Grasses having their flowers collected in a panicle or loose spike. 3. Plants that in their habit

#GRAM'MAR, n. s.

and external appearance are allied to the grasses. This class would have been natural if the author had not improperly introduced sweet rush, juncus, and arrow-headed grass, into the third section. Monti enumerates about 306 species of the grasses, which he reduces under Tournefort's genera; to these he added three new genera. Scheuchzer, in his Aristographia, published likewise in 1719, divides the grasses, as Monti, from the disposition of their flowers, into the four following sections: 1. Grasses with flowers in a spike, as phalaris, anthoxanthum, and frumentum. 2. Irregular grasses, as schonanthus and cornucopia. 3. Grasses with flowers growing in a simple panicle or loose spike, as reed and millet. 4. Grasses with flowers growing in a compound panicle, or diffused spike, as oats and poa. See BOTANY.

GRAMI'NEOUS, adj. Lat. gramineus. Grassy. Gramineous plants are such as have a long leaf without a footstalk.

GRAMINIVOROUS, adj. Lat. gramen and voro. Grass-eating; living upon grass.

The ancients were versed chiefly in the dissection of brutes, among which the graminivorous kind have a party-coloured choroides. Sharp's Surgery.

GRAMMAR.

Fr. grammaire, GRAM'MAR-SCHOOL, n. s. | grammairien; Lat. GRAMMA'RIAN, n.s. grammaticus; Gr. GRAMMATICAL, adj. papua, a letter. The GRAMMATICALLY, adv. science of writing or GRAMMATICASTER, n. s. J speaking correctly; the art or person who teaches the relation of words to each other; the book used for teaching this science; the place in which the learned languages are taught; whatever belongs to the rules of grammar: grammaticaster is a low verbal pedant: this word is obsolete.

I can no more expound in this matere; I lerne song; I can but smal grammere.

Chaucer. The Prioresses Tale. Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar-school.

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We make a countryman dumb, whom we will not allow to speak but by the rules of grammar. Id. The ordinary way of learning Latin in a grammarschool I cannot encourage. Locke.

Men speaking language, according to the grammar rules of that language, do yet speak improperly of things.

Id. I have not vexed language with the doubts, the remarks, and eternal triflings of the French grammaticasters. Rymer.

When a sentence is distinguished into the nouns, the verbs, pronouns, adverbs, and other particles of speech which compose it, then it is said to be analysed grammatically. Watts.

As grammar teacheth us to speak properly, so it is the part of rhetorick to instruct how to do it elegantly, by adding beauty to that language that before was naked and grammatically true. Baker.

We are naturally led to begin with the consideration of substantive nouns, which are the foundation of all grammur, and may be considered as the most ancient part of speech. Blair's Lectures.

The first degree of proficiency is, in painting, what grammar is in literature, a general preparation for whatever species of the art the student may afterwards choose for his more particular application.

Sir J. Reynolds.

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