American Dictionary of the English Language

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CIVIL, adjective

1. Relating to the community, or to the policy and government of the citizens and subjects of a state; as in the phrases, civil rights, civil government, civil privileges, civil war, civil justice. It is opposed to criminal; as a civil suit, a suit between citizens alone; whereas a criminal process is between the state and a citizen. It is distinguished from ecclesiastical, which respects the church; and from military, which respects the army and navy.

2. Relating to any man as a member of a community; as civil power, civil rights, the power or rights which a man enjoys as a citizen.

3. Reduced to order, rule and government; under a regular administration; implying some refinement of manners; not savage or wild; as civil life; civil society.

4. Civilized; courteous; complaisant; gentle and obliging; well-bred; affable; kind; having the manners of a city, as opposed to the rough, rude, coarse manners of a savage or clown.

Where civil speech and soft persuasion hung.

5. Grave; sober; not gay or showy.

Till civil suited morn appear.

6. Compaisant; polite; a popular colloquial use of the word.

7. civil death, in law, is that which cuts off a man from civil society, or its rights and benefits, as banishment, outlawry, excommunication, entering into a monastery, etc., as distinguished from natural death.

8. civil law, in a general sense, the law of a state, city or country; but in an appropriate sense, the Roman empire, comprised in the Institutes, Code and Digest of Justinian and the Novel Constitutions.

9. civil list, the officers of civil government, who are paid from the public treasury; also, the revenue appropriated to support the civil government.

The army of James II was paid out of his civil list.

10. civil state, the whole body of the laity or citizens, not included under the military, maritime, and ecclesiastical states.

11. civil war, a war between people of the same state or city; opposed to foreign war.

12. civil year, the legal year, or annual account of time which a government appoints to be used in its own dominions, as distinguished from the natural year, which is measured by the revolution of the heavenly bodies.

13. civil architecture, the architecture which is employed in constructing buildings for the purposes of civil life, in distinction from military and naval architecture; as private houses, palaces, churches, etc.