Part 60

Ser T. Browne.

By a strange fatality men suffer their dissenting.

Eikon Basilike.

3. That which is decreed by fate or which is fatal; a fatal event. Dryden.

Fa"tal*ly (?), adv. 1. In a manner proceeding from, or determined by, fate. Bentley.

2. In a manner issuing in death or ruin; mortally; destructively; as, fatally deceived or wounded.

Fa"tal*ness, n. Quality of being fatal. Johnson.

||Fa"ta Mor*ga"na (?). [It.; -- so called because this phenomenon was ||looked upon as the work of a fairy (It. fata) of the name of Morg·na. ||See Fairy.] A kind of mirage by which distant objects appear ||inverted, distorted, displaced, or multiplied. It is noticed ||particularly at the Straits of Messina, between Calabria and Sicily.

Fat"back` (?), n. (Zoˆl.) The menhaden.

Fat"-brained` (?), a. Dull of apprehension.

Fate (?), n. [L. fatum a prophetic declaration, oracle, what is ordained by the gods, destiny, fate, fr. fari to speak: cf. OF. fat. See Fame, Fable, Ban, and cf. 1st Fay, Fairy.] 1. A fixed decree by which the order of things is prescribed; the immutable law of the universe; inevitable necessity; the force by which all existence is determined and conditioned.

Necessity and chance Approach not me; and what I will is fate.

Milton.

Beyond and above the Olympian gods lay the silent, brooding, everlasting fate of which victim and tyrant were alike the instruments.

Froude.

2. Appointed lot; allotted life; arranged or predetermined event; destiny; especially, the final lot; doom; ruin; death.

The great, th'important day, big with the fate Of Cato and of Rome.

Addison.

Our wills and fates do so contrary run That our devices still are overthrown.

Shak.

The whizzing arrow sings, And bears thy fate, Antinous, on its wings.

Pope.

3. The element of chance in the affairs of life; the unforeseen and unestimated conitions considered as a force shaping events; fortune; esp., opposing circumstances against which it is useless to struggle; as, fate was, or the fates were, against him.

A brave man struggling in the storms of fate.

Pope.

Sometimes an hour of Fate's serenest weather strikes through our changeful sky its coming beams.

B. Taylor.

4. pl. [L. Fata, pl. of fatum.] (Myth.) The three goddesses, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, sometimes called the Destinies, or ParcÊwho were supposed to determine the course of human life. They are represented, one as holding the distaff, a second as spinning, and the third as cutting off the thread.