Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • In law, being in abeyance.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Being in a state of abeyance.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective inactive but capable of becoming active

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Back-formation from abeyance.

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Examples

  • Can I say this too or is it added slowly a confection abeyant synonym agreement hologr meu lar meu lar

    Sarah Dowling reads Erin Moure Lemon Hound 2009

  • He was what was called at Hintock “a solid-going fellow;” he maintained his abeyant mood, not from want of reciprocity, but from

    The Woodlanders 2006

  • He was nervously fingering the few coins in his pocket; but he had a curiously abeyant sense, as though he were looking, waiting for the climax.

    Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine 2004

  • He was nervously fingering the few coins in his pocket; but he had a curiously abeyant sense, as though he were looking, waiting for the climax.

    Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine 2004

  • The wild romanticist, the lover of the strange and the lurid and the grotesque who created the "Symphonic Fantastique," never, perhaps, became entirely abeyant.

    Musical Portraits Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers Paul Rosenfeld 1918

  • But when restraints to which he had long been accustomed and to which he yielded passive obedience were removed, and he was left in a condition of license, all the abeyant passions of his undisciplined nature were brought into prominence and antagonism with an environment where reciprocal obligations have not always found their highest expression.

    The American Negro: What He Was, What He Is, and What He May Become: A Critical and Practical Discussion 1901

  • He was well descended and well connected (there was an abeyant peerage in his family), but in point of fact, his social position was not better than that of some other boys in the school.

    Philip Gilbert Hamerton Hamerton, Philip G 1896

  • Hintock "a solid-going fellow;" he maintained his abeyant mood, not from want of reciprocity, but from a taciturn hesitancy, taught by life as he knew it.

    The Woodlanders Thomas Hardy 1884

  • The women were apparently serious, too, and where they were associated with the men were, if they were not really subject, strictly abeyant, in the spectator's eye.

    Literature and Life (Complete) William Dean Howells 1878

  • The women were apparently serious, too, and where they were associated with the men were, if they were not really subject, strictly abeyant, in the spectator's eye.

    Short Stories and Essays (from Literature and Life) William Dean Howells 1878

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