Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A morbid retention of fecal matter in the bowels. See constipation.
- n. Figuratively, slowness in action; especially, slowness or difficulty in giving forth or uttering, in a general sense; closeness; reticence.
Wiktionary
- n. The state or quality of being costive; constipation.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. An unnatural retention of the fecal matter of the bowels; constipation.
- n. Inability to express one's self; stiffness.
Examples
“The author prefers to use the term costiveness for the general debased condition of the system from auto-intoxication depending upon proctitis and similar conditions of the intestinal tract.”
“When medicines become necessary to obviate that kind of costiveness which arises from imperfect intestinal contraction, physicians usually administer rhubarb, aloes, and similar laxatives, combined with tonics.”
Popular Education For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes
“Old milk, and especially when boiled, is liable to induce this kind of costiveness in some grown persons; which is probably owing to their not possessing sufficient gastric acid to curdle and digest it; for as both these processes require gastric acid, it follows, that a greater quantity of it is necessary, than in the digestion of other aliments, which do not previously require being curdled.”
“I have declared in the causes what harm costiveness hath done in procuring this disease; if it be so noxious, the opposite must needs be good, or mean at least, as indeed it is, and to this cure necessarily required; maxime conducit, saith Montaltus, cap.”
“Correctors to expel windiness, and costiveness helped”
“If costiveness offend in this, or any other of the three species, it is to be corrected with suppositories, clysters or lenitives, powder of senna, condite prunes, &c.”
“Medicines select for melancholy; against wind and costiveness; for love-melancholy”
“In the first rank of these, I may well reckon up costiveness, and keeping in of our ordinary excrements, which as it often causeth other diseases, so this of melancholy in particular.”
“What is most advisable in this respect is, to use such a diet and manner of living, as may prevent costiveness constipation.”
“Riding, as well as a sedentary life, encourages costiveness.”
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