SPIR'IT, noun [Latin spiritus, from spiro, to breathe, to blow. The primary sense is to rush or drive.]

1. Primarily, wind; air in motion; hence, breath. All bodies have spirits and pneumatical parts within them. [This sense is now unusual.]

2. Animal excitement, or the effect of it; life; ardor; fire; courage; elevation or vehemence of mind. The troops attacked the enemy with great spirit The young man has the spirit of youth. He speaks or act with spirit Spirits, in the plural, is used in nearly a like sense. The troops began to recover their spirits.

3. Vigor of intellect; genius. His wit, his beauty and his spirit The noblest spirit or genius cannot deserve enough of mankind to pretend to the esteem of heroic virtue.

4. Temper; disposition of mind, habitual or temporary; as a man of a generous spirit or of a revengeful spirit; the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit Let us go to the house of God in the spirit of prayer.

5. The soul of man; the intelligent, immaterial and immortal part of human beings. [See Soul.] the spirit shall return to God that gave it. Eceles. 12.

6. An immaterial intelligent substance. spirit is a substance in which thinking, knowing, doubting, and a power of moving do subsist. Hence,

7. An immaterial intelligent being. By which he went and preached to the spirit in prison. I Pet. 3. God is a spirit John 4:23.

8. Turn of mind; temper; occasions; state of the mind. A perfect judge will read each work of wit, with the same spirit that its author writ.

9. Powers of mind distinct from the body. In spirit perhaps he also saw Rich Mexico, the seat of Montezume.

10. Sentiment; perception. You spirit is too true, your fears too certain.

11. Eager desire; disposition of mind excited and directed to a particular object. God has made a spirit of building succeed a spirit of pulling down.

12. A person of activity; a man of life, vigor or enterprise. The watery kingdom is no bar to stop the foreign spirits, but they come.

13. Persons distinguished by qualities of the mind. Such spirits as he desired to please, such would I choose for my judges.

14. Excitement of mind; animation; cheerfulness; usually in the plural. We found our friend in very good spirits. He has a great flow of spirits. -To sing thy praise, would heaven my breath prolong, Infusing spirits worthy such a song.

15. Life or strength of resemblance; essential qualities; as, to set off the face in its true spirit The copy has not the spirit of the original.

16. Something eminently pure and refined. Nor doth the eye itself, that most pure spirit of sense, behold itself.

17. That which hath power or energy; the quality of any substance which manifest life, activity, or the power of strongly affecting other bodies; as the spirit of wine or of any liquor.

18. A strong, pungent or stimulation liquor, usually obtained by distillation, as rum, brandy, gin, whiskey. In America, spirit used without other words explanatory of its meaning, signifies the liquor distilled from cane-juice, or rum. We say, new spirit or old spirit Jamaica spirit etc.

19. An apparition; a ghost.

20. The renewed nature of man. Matthew 26:41. Galatians 5:5.

21. The influences of the Holy spirit Matthew 22:43.

HOLY SPIRIT, the third person in the Trinity.

SPIRIT, verb transitive

1. To animate; to actuate; as a spirit

So talkd the spirited sly snake. [Little used.]

2. To animate with vigor; to excite; to encourage; as, civil dissensions spirit the ambition of private man.

It is sometimes followed by up; as, to spirit up.

3. To kidnap.

To spirit away, to entice or seduce.