accumbent

comparative more accumbent · superlative most accumbent

1. Leaning or reclining, as the ancients did at their meals.

   Together his accumbent pose and closed eyes denoted sleep, as an alternative to death, which the stiff, recumbent pose of previous effigies had embodied.

   1998, Anne Markham Schulz, Giammaria Mosca called Padovano: a Renaissance sculptor in Italy and Poland, →ISBN, page 136

2. biologyLying against anything, as one part of a leaf against another leaf

   Distinguished from other genera, with accumbent cotyledons, in the same class and order, by the entire, nearly equal petals; and the dehiscent, nearly entirely pouch, of 2, 1- or many-seeded cells, a broad dissepiment (septum), and nearly flat valves.

   1840, William Baxter, British phænogamous botany, volume 5

plural accumbents

1. One who rests in an accumbent position, especially at table.

   Let us, indeed, see how the point of view has changed which was held in regard to those cultivated and glib accumbents who in former days were taken for real social workers.

   1903, “What Is Oblomovisn”, in Leo Wiener, editor, Anthology of Russian Literature from the Earliest Period to the, translation of original by Nikolay Aleksandrovich Dobrolyubov, page 275

   2 more examples

   What a pennance must be done by every accumbent, in sitting out the passage through all these dishes; what a task the stomach must be put to in the concoction of so many mixtures.

   1630, Bishop Joseph Hall, Occasional Meditations

   Said also to be fond of playing practical jokes, he was apparently in the habit of placing his dinner guests on inflated cushions, which were contrived to deflate suddenly, sending their unsuspecting accumbents sprawling under the tables.

   2014, Trevor R. Bryce, Ancient Syria: A Three Thousand Year History