averruncation

plural averruncations

1. archaiccountablerareuncountable(The act of) warding off, averting (something evil).

   Quest[ion]. Whether averruncation of Epidemicall diseases, by Telesmes, be feisable and lawfull ? Answ[er]. [etc.]

   1649, Iohn Robinson, Miscellaneous Propositions and Quæres, R. Royston, ch. 10, page 29

   4 more examples

   BY Theurgick or Telestick Rites they conceived that they could procure a communication with the good Dæmons, and expulsion or averruncation of the bad.

   1662, Thomas Stanley, The History of the Chaldaick Philosophy, Thomas Dring, page 52

   […] Pliny allows them [sc. mice] to have been always an ill omen, and therefore you should be advised to prepare against it either by averruncation or traps.

   1726, Jonathan Swift, The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, D.D., volume III, G. Bell and Sons, published 1912, page 349

   There are, we presume, different forms in different rituals; for in another that we heve seen, the bishop, while anointing and crossing the bell, prays God will send his Holy Spirit, that the bell may become sanctified for the repelling of all the power, snares, and illusions of the devil, for the souls of the dead, and especially for the averruncation of storms, thunder, and tempests!

   1827, “Catholicism in Silesia”. (review), The Foreign Quarterly Review, Nº II., Art. XI., page 545 (footnote)

   […] I believe / many failed in their averruncation / of Rodomonte's assaults and they would achieve / nothing more than the early termination / of lives they could have enjoyed or put to use.

   2009, David R. Slavitt tr. Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso: A New Verse Translation, Harvard University Press →ISBN, Canto XXIX.38., page 589

2. countableuncountableEradication, uprooting.