FIG'URATE, adjective [Latin figuratus.]

1. Of a certain determinate form.

Plants are all figurate and determinate, which inanimate bodies are not.

2. Resembling any thing of a determinate form; as figurate stones, stones or fossils resembling shells.

3. Figurative. [Not used.]

Figurate counterpoint, in music, that wherein there is a mixture of discords with concords.

Figurate descant, that in which discords are concerned, though not so much as concords. It may be called the ornament or rhetorical part of music, containing all the varieties of points, figures, syncopes, and diversities of measure.