abstersive

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“
And let the abstersive sponge the board renew;

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Definitions (4)

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  1. Cleansing; having the quality of removing foulness. See detersive. The seats with purple clothe in order due, And let the abstersive sponge the board renew. Pope, Odyssey, xx. 189. A tablet stood of that abstersive tree Where Æthiop's swarthy bird did build her nest. Sir J. Denham, Chess.
  2. That which effects abstersion; that which purifies. Abstersives are fuller's earth, soap, linseed-oil, and oxgall. Petty, in Sprat's Hist. Royal Soc., p. 295.

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Examples (6)

  • And let the abstersive sponge the board renew; —  The Odyssey
  • There many a flower abstersive grew, —  The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume 2
  • All the parts of this tree are abstersive, and therefore sovereign for the consolidating wounds; and asswage the pains of the gout: But the bark decocted in common water, to almost the consistence of a syrup, adding a third part of _aqua vitæ_, is a most admirable remedy for the _ischiadicæ_ or hip-pain, the place being well rubb’d and chaf’d by the fire. —  Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) Or A Discourse of Forest Trees
  • Pownall the local historian tells you, "as a vulnerary and abstersive," and healed wounds with it; then some labourers accidentally drank it, and Epsom's fortune was made. —  Highways and Byways in Surrey
  • More particularly, the water of this fountaine hath an incisive and abstersive faculty to cut, and loosen the viscous and clammy humours of the body, and to make meable the grosse: as also by its piercing and penetrating power, subtilty of parts, and by his deterging and desiccative qualities to open all the obstructions, or oppilations of the mesentery (from whence the seeds of most diseases doe arise and spring) liver, splen, kidneis, and other interiour parts, and (which is more to be noted and observed) to coole and contemperate their unnaturall heat, helping, and removing also all the griefes and infirmities depending thereupon. —  Spadacrene Anglica The English Spa Fountain
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Etymologies (1)

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  1. = French abstersif, from L. *abstersivus, from abstergēre, past participle abstersus: see absterge.
 

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