septimate

present singular third person septimates · participle present septimating · participle past septimated · past septimated

1. transitiveSubmit (someone or something) to septimation; reduce by one seventh.

   Arrange into sevens; septuplicate; septimate.

   1825, Robert Archibald Armstrong, “Seachdaich”, in A Gaelic Dictionary, in Two Parts, page 492

   3 more examples

   We may ſay, without the leaſt hyperbole, nature ſeptimates; art centeſimates us.

   1755, The Monthly Review, or, Literary Journal, XIII, page 141

   That regulation which is usually called the seventh or huftum…conveys to the Bengali rayat the same uncomfortable impression, which is usually connected with the idea of being ‘quartered’ or ‘decimated.’ When he sees that he is about to be ‘septimated,’ he makes every effort in his power to escape from his fate by flight, thereby risking the loss of all he possesses in the world.

   1852 August, Rev. J. Wenger, “On the desirableness of Commuting the Government Land Tax” quoted by Macleod Wylie in Bengal as a Field of Missions (1854), page 285

   It was during the cold spell of 1935 that influenza and other forms of sickness “septimated” the labour supply for the mines of Southern Rhodesia.

   1938, Geoffrey Clement Watson, The Soil and Social Reclamation, page 102

plural septimates

1. A group of seven.

   At the end of this septimate of days he enters into the sabbath of his God.

   1942, Herbert Wallace Schneider, George Lawton, A Prophet and a Pilgrim, page 499

   1 more example

   In the 744 septimates of January there are only seven in which all the W and S are positive; in the 720 of June there are none.

   1876, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, CLXV:ii, page 418

1. not comparablerareIn groups of seven.

   She let her hands sink down…into the beginning of Partita VI, letting its curious seven-headed rhythm ring out, one after another, like amethysts on a chain. She played the fugue with marked sadness, and then brought back the septimate chords to enclose it.

   1969, The American Literary Anthology, II, page 267