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.

Verb

To describe or characterize something by listing its qualities.

To make someone, or to become competent or eligible for some position or task.

* Macaulay

He had qualified himself for municipal office by taking the oaths to the sovereigns in possession.

To certify or license someone for something.

To modify, limit, restrict or moderate something; especially to add conditions or requirements for an assertion to be true.

*1598 , Shakespeare,

*:O! never say that I was false of heart,

*:Though absence seem'd my flame to qualify

To mitigate, alleviate (something); to make less disagreeable.

* 1590 , Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene , II.vi:

he balmes and herbes thereto applyde, / And euermore with mighty spels them charmd, / That in short space he has them qualifyde , / And him restor'd to health, that would haue algates dyde.

To compete successfully in some stage of a competition and become eligible for the next stage.

To give individual quality to; to modulate; to vary; to regulate.

* Sir Thomas Browne

It hath no larynx to qualify the sound.

(juggling) To throw and catch each object at least twice.