_, to put together), the
action of putting together and combining, and the product of such
action. There are many applications of the word. In philology it is used
of the putting together of two distinct words to form a single word; and
in grammar, of the combination of words into sentences, and sentences
into periods, and then applied to the result of such combination, and to
the art of producing a work in prose or verse, or to the work itself. In
music "composition" is used both of the art of combining musical sounds
in accordance with the rules of musical form, and, more generally, of
the whole art of creation or invention. The name "composer" is thus
particularly applied to the musical creator in general. In the other
fine arts the word is more strictly used of the balanced arrangement of
the parts of a picture, of a piece of sculpture or a building, so that
they should form one harmonious whole. The word also means an agreement
or an adjustment of differences between two or more parties, and is thus
the best general term to describe the agreement, often called by the
equivalent German word "Ausgleich," between Austria and Hungary in 1867.
A more particular use is the legal one, for an agreement by which a
creditor agrees to take from his debtor a sum less than his debt in
satisfaction of the whole (see BANKRUPTCY). In logic "composition" is
the name given to a fallacy of equivocation, where what is true
distributively of each member of a class is inferred to be true of the
whole class collectively. The fallacy of "division" is the converse of
this, where what is true of a term used collectively is inferred to be
true of its several parts. A common source of these errors in reasoning
is the confusion between the collective and distributive meanings of the
word "all." Composition, often shortened to "compo," is the name given
to many materials compounded of more than one substance, and is used in
various trades and manufactures, as in building, for a mixture, such as
stucco, cement and plaster, for covering walls, &c., often made to
represent stone or marble; a similar moulded compound is employed to
represent carved wood.

COMPOUND (from Lat. _componere_, to combine or put together), a
combination of various elements, substances or ingredients, so as to
form one composite whole. A "chemical compound" is a substance which can
be resolved into simple constituents, as opposed to an element which
cannot be so reso