cumbent

comparative more cumbent · superlative most cumbent

1. lying down, recumbent

   While thus she mused, she started at a cry: "Ah! here's our siren, cumbent on the rocks!

   1870, Epes Sargent, The Woman Who Dared

   3 more examples

   Altar-tombs with cumbent effigies were painted so as to correspond in tone with the colours displayed on the walls; the pavement of encaustic tiles, of different devices, was interspersed with sepulchral slabs and inlaid brasses; and screen-work, niches for statuary, mouldings, and sculpture of different degrees of excellence, abounded.

   1841, Matthew Holbeche Bloxam, The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed.

   The only tree growing in Spitzbergen is the dwarf willow, which rises to the vast height of two inches! towering with great pride above the mosses, lichens, and a few other cumbent plants."

   1852, Mrs. David Osborne, The World of Waters

   Hereford is the dirtiest old city I have seen in England, yet pretty large; the streets are irregular and the houses old, and its cathedral a reverend old pile, but not beautiful; the niches of the walls of the church are adorned with the figures of its bishops as big as the life, in a cumbent posture, with the year of their interments newly painted over.

   1888, Daniel Defoe, From London to Land's End