Part 87

This weak impress of love is as a figure Trenched in ice.

Shak.

3. Characteristic; mark of distinction; stamp. South.

4. A device. See Impresa. Cussans.

To describe . . . emblazoned shields, Impresses quaint.

Milton.

5. [See Imprest, Press to force into service.] The act of impressing, or taking by force for the public service; compulsion to serve; also, that which is impressed.

Why such impress of shipwrights?

Shak.

Impress gang, a party of men, with an officer, employed to impress seamen for ships of war; a press gang. -- Impress money, a sum of money paid, immediately upon their entering service, to men who have been impressed.

Im*press`i*bil"i*ty (?), n. The quality of being impressible; susceptibility.

Im*press"i*ble (?), a. [Cf. F. impressible.] Capable of being impressed; susceptible; sensitive. -- Im*press"i*ble*ness, n. -- Im*press"i*bly, adv.

Im*pres"sion (?), n. [F. impression, L. impressio.] 1. The act of impressing, or the state of being impressed; the communication of a stamp, mold, style, or character, by external force or by influence.

2. That which is impressed; stamp; mark; indentation; sensible result of an influence exerted from without.

The stamp and clear impression of good sense.

Cowper.

To shelter us from impressions of weather, we must spin, we must weave, we must build.

Barrow.

3. That which impresses, or exercises an effect, action, or agency; appearance; phenomenon. [Obs.]

Portentous blaze of comets and impressions in the air.

Milton.

A fiery impression falling from out of Heaven.

Holland.

4. Influence or effect on the senses or the intellect hence, interest, concern. Reid.

His words impression left.

Milton.

Such terrible impression made the dream.

Shak.