Definitions

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  • noun Plural form of paction.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Writers of politics add together pactions to find men's duties; and lawyers, laws and facts to find what is right and wrong in the actions of private men.

    Leviathan 2007

  • Natural equality and freedom were condemned as contrary to biblical evidence, as were “such imaginery pactions between Kings and their people as many dream of.”

    SOCIAL CONTRACT MICHAEL LEVIN 1968

  • Writers of politics add together ‘pactions’ to find men’s ‘duties, ’ and lawyers ‘laws’ and ‘facts, ’ to find what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ in the actions of private men.

    Chapter V. Of Reason and Science 1909

  • It is confounded with those conventions in which matters of dispute among sovereign powers are compromised, by the taking off a duty more or less, by the surrender of a frontier town, or a disputed district, on the one side or the other; by pactions in which the pretensions of families are settled,

    Political Pamphlets George Saintsbury 1889

  • No need to remind you, I think, of the demoniac pactions of Catherine de Medici and of the Valois, of the trial of the monk Jean de Vaulx, of the investigations of the Sprengers and the Lancres and those learned inquisitors who had thousands of necromancers and sorcerers roasted alive.

    Là-bas Keene [Translator] Wallace 1877

  • Writers of politics add together pactions to find men's duties; and lawyers, laws and facts to find what is right and wrong in the actions of private men.

    Leviathan, or, The matter, forme, & power of a common-wealth ecclesiasticall and civill 1651

  • “Unhappy woman,” replied the clergyman, “man forms not pactions with his Maker as with a creature of clay like himself.

    Chronicles of the Canongate 2008

  • It is confounded with those conventions in which matters of dispute among sovereign powers are compromised by the taking off a duty more or less, by the surrender of a frontier town or a disputed district on the one side or the other, by pactions in which the pretensions of families are settled, (as by a conveyancer making family substitutions and successions,) without any alteration in the laws, manners, religion, privileges, and customs of the cities or territories which are the subject of such arrangements.

    The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 05 (of 12) Edmund Burke 1763

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