Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The act of yawning.
- n. The state of being drowsy or inattentive; dullness.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The act of gaping or yawning.
- n. Unusual sleepiness; drowsiness; dullness; stupidity.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. The act of gaping or yawning.
- n. Drowsiness; dullness; sluggishness.
WordNet 3.0
- n. drowsiness and dullness manifested by yawning
- n. an involuntary intake of breath through a wide open mouth; usually triggered by fatigue or boredom
Etymologies
- From oscitant, yawning, from Latin ōscitāns, ōscitant-, present participle of ōscitāre, to yawn : ōs, mouth; see ōs- in Indo-European roots + citāre, to move; see kei-2 in Indo-European roots.
Examples
“Nor did the Romans indeed take away their power of judging in capital matters, but they, by their own oscitancy, supine and unreasonable lenity, lost it themselves.”
“For the thing itself affirmed by the doctor, I cannot enough admire with what oscitancy or contempt he considers his readers (of which manner of proceeding this is very far from being the only instance), that he should confidently impose such things upon them.”
The Doctrine of the Saints��� Perseverance Explained and Confirmed
“Such, among others, is the discovery made by a writer in the Gentlemans Magazine, that in one place winter and summer come too close together; or the strange specimen of oscitancy which another (it is, in fact, Mr. Keightley) considers it worth while to record respecting the misplacing of the village of Hambrook.”
“Such is the oscitancy of man, that he lies torpid for ages under these aggressions, until, at last, some signal abusethe violation of Lucrece, the death of Virginia, the oppression of William Tellshakes him from his slumber.”
“Such, among others, is the discovery made by a writer in the Gentleman's Magazine, that in one place winter and summer come too close together; or the “strange specimen of oscitancy” which another (it is, in fact, Mr. Keightley) considers it worth while to record respecting the misplacing of the village of Hambrook.”
Fielding
“Such, among others, is the discovery made by a writer in the _Gentleman's Magazine_, that in one place winter and summer come too close together; or the "strange specimen of oscitancy" which another”
“And it will be found that some of its omissions which have given rise to prolonged discussion are probably to be referred to nothing else but the oscitancy of a transcriber with such a codex before him [129]: Without having recourse to any more abstruse hypothesis; without any imputation of bad faith; -- certainly without supposing that the words omitted did not exist in the inspired autograph of the Evangelist.”
“And so he puts it somewhat thus: -- "While we are disposed to recognize substantial agreement, and general conformity in respect of details, among the synoptical witnesses, in their leading external outlines, we are yet constrained to withhold our unqualified acceptance of any theory of Inspiration which should claim for these compilers exemption from the oscitancy, and generally from the infirmities of humanity." ...”
“The demandant is either the same coheir named above, viz. Ingelram, altered by a clerical error into Waleram, -- such errors being of common occurrence, sometimes from oscitancy, and sometimes because the clerk had to guess at the extended form of a contracted name, -- or he is a descendant and heir of Ingelram,”
“Nothing else has evidently happened but that, through the oscitancy of some very early scribe, the [Greek: IskariôTÊN], [Greek: IskariôTÊ], have been attracted into concord with the immediately preceding genitive”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘oscitancy’.
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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I Love These Words
onomatopoeia, aesthetics, culminating, oscitancy, propagate, kindergarchy, kipple, melee

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