floated to have their bottoms examined and cleaned; graving dock

A dock into which ve els are a dry-dock. The ve el is floated in and the gates at the entrance closed when the tide is at ebb. graving-piece, s. Ship build .: A small piece of wood inserted to supply the defects of a plank. gra-vi-ta, adv. [Ital.] Mus.: With weight, dignity, and majesty. grăv-i-tāte, v . i . [Latin gravitatem , acc us. of gravitas =weight, gravity; Fr. graviter .] 1. Lit .: To be affected by or under the influence of gravitation; to move by gravitation; to tend to the center. "All its parts magnetic power a ert, And to each other gravitate." Black more: Creation, bk. ii. 2. Fig .: To tend toward any center of attraction; to be attracted. "A multitude of those mean and timid politicians who naturally gravitate toward the stronger party."- Macau lay: Hist. Eng . , ch. xiii. grăv-i-ta-tion,s [Eng. grav it at (e); -ion; Fr. gravitation.] I. Ordinary Language: 1. Lit.: In the same sense as II. 1. "When the loose mountain trembles from on high, Shall gravitation cease, if you go by?" Pope: E ay on Man, iv. 128. 2. Figuratively: (1) Attraction produced not by a physical, but by some moral force. (2) Downward tendency in the literary world. "With all the might of gravitation blest." Pope : Dunciad , ii. 318. II. Physics : A natural force acting upon all mate. rial bodies throughout the universe, with the effect of attracting or drawing them to each other. Hence it is often called the attraction of gravitation. It has been shown that every molecule of one body acts upon every molecule of the other. The attraction between two material particles is directly proportional to the product of their ma es, and in tances asunder- i . e., the force of gravity decreases versely proportional to the square of their dis in exact proportion as the square of the distances increases. Universal or general gravitation be divided into celestial and terrestrial gravitation; but when the earth is viewed as a planet the second category disappears in the first. 1. Celestial gravitation : (1) Hist .: A glimmering perception that the heavenly bodies attracted each other was po e ed by Demo crit us and Epicurus in ancient times, and by Bacon, Galileo, Kepler, and Hooke during the dawn of modern science; but the decisive discovery of the universality of gravitation and the regulating the operations was reserved for Sir Isaac Newton. Cavendish illustrated Newton's discovery by experiment. (2) Gravitation among the heavenly bodies : Two forces operate against each other, the one a projectile and the other an attractive force. If the former only existed, the several planets would go off into space, moving, unle collision with other bodies occurred, in straight lines onward forever, unle , indeed, some subtle ether gradually retarded their progre and ultimately brought them to a state of rest. If gravity alone operated, the planets would fall toward the center of the sun tances. 2. Terrestrial gravitation : The law of gravitation as operating on the earth, as, for instance, on the fall of a stone to the ground. [GRAVITY.] Law of gravitation : [GRAVITATION, II.]