Verb

(en verb)

To determine the weight of an object.

Often with "out", to measure a certain amount of something by its weight, e.g. for sale.

He weighed out two kilos of oranges for a client.

(figuratively) To determine the intrinsic value or merit of an object, to evaluate.

You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting.

(intransitive, figuratively, obsolete) To judge; to estimate.

* Spenser

could not weigh of worthiness aright

To consider a subject. (rfex)

To have a certain weight.

I weigh ten and a half stone.

To have weight; to be heavy; to press down.

* Cowper

They only weigh the heavier.

* Shakespeare

Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff / Which weighs upon the heart.

To be considered as important; to have weight in the intellectual balance.

* Shakespeare

Your vows to her and me will even weigh .

* John Locke

This objection ought to weigh with those whose reading is designed for much talk and little knowledge.

(nautical) To raise an anchor free of the seabed.

(nautical) To weigh anchor.

* 1624 , , Generall Historie , in Kupperman 1988, p. 91:

Towards the evening we wayed , and approaching the shoare [...], we landed where there lay a many of baskets and much bloud, but saw not a Salvage.

*1841 , (Edgar Allan Poe), ‘A Descent into the Maelström’:

*:‘Here we used to remain until nearly time for slack-water again, when we weighed and made for home.’

To bear up; to raise; to lift into the air; to swing up.

* Cowper

Weigh the vessel up.

(obsolete) To consider as worthy of notice; to regard.

* Shakespeare

I weigh not you.

* Spenser

all that she so dear did weigh

Verb

(contemplat)

To look at on all sides or in all its aspects; to view or consider with continued attention; to regard with deliberate care; to meditate on; to study, ponder, or consider.

* Milton

To love, at least contemplate and admire, / What I see excellent.

* Byron

We thus dilate / Our spirits to the size of that they contemplate .

To consider as a possibility.

* A. Hamilton

There remain some particulars to complete the information contemplated by those resolutions.

* Kent

If a treaty contains any stipulations which contemplate a state of future war.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-07-20, volume=408, issue=8845, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= The attack of the MOOCs , passage=Since the launch early last year of […] two Silicon Valley start-ups offering free education through MOOCs, massive open online courses, the ivory towers of academia have been shaken to their foundations. University brands built in some cases over centuries have been forced to contemplate the possibility that information technology will rapidly make their existing business model obsolete.}}