possum

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possum

1. an informal name for opossum

2. Austral. and NZ any of various Australasian arboreal marsupials, such as Trichosurus vulpecula (brush-tailed phalanger), having dense fur and a long tail: family Phalangeridae

References in classic literature ?

Take one day; share it into sections; to each section apportion its task: leave no stray unemployed quarters of an hour, ten minutes, five minutes--include all; do each piece of business in its turn with method, with rigid regularity.

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Thus also, those ancient cities which, from being at first only villages, have become, in course of time, large towns, are usually but ill laid out compared with the regularity constructed towns which a professional architect has freely planned on an open plain; so that although the several buildings of the former may often equal or surpass in beauty those of the latter, yet when one observes their indiscriminate juxtaposition, there a large one and here a small, and the consequent crookedness and irregularity of the streets, one is disposed to allege that chance rather than any human will guided by reason must have led to such an arrangement.

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When will the time arrive that the federal government can raise and maintain an army capable of erecting a despotism over the great body of the people of an immense empire, who are in a situation, through the medium of their State governments, to take measures for their own defense, with all the celerity, regularity, and system of independent nations?

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His eyebrows, like his hair, affected youth by the care and regularity with which they were combed.

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Surely a moment's reflection, and a single instance from common life, must convince every one that our whole social system is based upon Regularity, or Equality of Angles.

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He stopped and swallowed; he was determined that all should go with regularity.

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Her lips were slightly parted, and her breast rose and fell with the regularity of a pendulum.

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Now look at this clock; it is electrical, and goes with a regularity that defies the best chronometers.

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Phileas Fogg was looking for a servant, and that his life was one of unbroken regularity, that he neither travelled nor stayed from home overnight, he felt sure that this would be the place he was after.

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The Silent Man seemed even more clumsy than usual, and drank champagne with regularity and determination out of sheer nervousness.

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Then the shots were repeated without regularity, but always aimed with the same accuracy.

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The same night, such a man of regularity was the patron of The Young Amelia, the profits were divided, and each man had a hundred Tuscan livres, or about eighty francs.