Verb

(en verb)

(obsolete)  To assign, appoint (something to someone); to designate.

* 1646 , (Thomas Browne), Pseudodoxia Epidemica , I.10:

he looks not below the Moon, but hath designed the regiment of sublunary affairs unto inferiour deputations.

* Dryden

He was designed to the study of the law.

To plan and carry out (a picture, work of art, construction etc.).

* {{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham)

, title=(The China Governess) , chapter=1 citation , passage=The huge square box, parquet-floored and high-ceilinged, had been arranged to display a suite of bedroom furniture designed and made in the halcyon days of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when modish taste was just due to go clean out of fashion for the best part of the next hundred years.}}

Primitive people believe that gods designed the Earth and humans.

(obsolete) To mark out and exhibit; to designate; to indicate; to show; to point out; to appoint.

* Shakespeare

We shall see / Justice design the victor's chivalry.

* Beaumont and Fletcher

Meet me to-morrow where the master / And this fraternity shall design .

Verb

(defin)

To determine with precision; to mark out with distinctness; to ascertain or exhibit clearly.

* Sir (Isaac Newton)

Ringsvery distinct and well defined .

*{{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=July-August, author= Lee S. Langston

, title= The Adaptable Gas Turbine , passage=Turbines have been around for a long time—windmills and water wheels are early examples. The name comes from the Latin turbo'', meaning ''vortex , and thus the defining property of a turbine is that a fluid or gas turns the blades of a rotor, which is attached to a shaft that can perform useful work.}}

(obsolete) To settle, decide (an argument etc.).

* 1596 , (Edmund Spenser), (The Faerie Queene) , IV.3:

These warlike Champions, all in armour shine, / Assembled were in field the chalenge to define .

To express the essential nature of something.

*{{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=May-June, author=

, volume=101, issue=3, page=178, magazine=(American Scientist) , title= Crinkly Curves , passage=Cantor defined a one-to-one correspondence between the points of the square and the points of the line segment. Every point in the square was associated with a single point in the segment; every point in the segment was matched with a unique point in the square.}}

To state the meaning of a word, phrase, sign, or symbol.

To describe, explain, or make definite and clear.

To demark sharply the outlines or limits of an area or concept.

*{{quote-magazine, year=2012, month=March-April, author=(Jan Sapp)

, volume=100, issue=2, page=164, magazine=(American Scientist) , title= Race Finished , passage=Few concepts are as emotionally charged as that of race. The word conjures up a mixture of associations—culture, ethnicity, genetics, subjugation, exclusion and persecution. But is the tragic history of efforts to define groups of people by race really a matter of the misuse of science, the abuse of a valid biological concept?}}

(mathematics) To establish the referent of a term or notation.