incessive

English

Etymology

From Latin incessus + -ive, from Latin incesso + -ive.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɪnˈsɛs.ɪv/
• Rhymes: -ɛsɪv

Adjective

incessive (comparative more incessive, superlative most incessive)

1. Intense and active.
   • 1894, George Chapman Caldwell, The American Chemist, page 502:

     In both species it is impossible for the eye to follow the incessive movements of the feet, and to compare them with those of other quadrupeds, but from their chrono-photographic images it is easy to see that, taking the order of the movements of the limbs as a standard, the lizards are trotting animals.

   • 1930, Margaret Sanger, The Birth Control Review - Volumes 14-15, page 233:

     The primordial wants have been satisfied only by incessive toil, at least for most people.

   • 2008, Thomas Stone, Frontier Experience, →ISBN, page 26:

     It is true, the atmospheric regions, at first subnuvolar, soon became enubilated; and old Sol did not radiate his sudorific caloric so potently as on the hesternal day, but the roads had, in some places, become lutulent and somewhat clarty; presenting a great difficiliation to my incessive velocity, on account of the viscosity of the surface.

2. Fierce; cruel and aggressive.
   • 1860, John Tomlinson, Rambles twenty miles round Doncaster, page 65:

     What strange lessons of preistly domination do we read in the institutions of Knights Templar, the preaching of Crusades against the Infidel, and those bitter, incessive dissensions between kings and popes !

   • 1929, Legislative Documents - Volume 18, Issues 46-57, page 13:

     War, the institution, the incessive monster which devours whole peoples, the world has learned to hate.

   • 1990, United States Congress House. Committee on Foreign Affairs: Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs, U.S. Congressional Observer Delegation to Taiwan, The upcoming elections in Taiwan:

     Because of its incessive conflicts with warlords and the Japanese, the Nationalist Party had to adopt a Soviet-type model for its political bureacratic structure.

   • 2004, Okon Edet Uya, Education for sustainable democracy: the Nigerian experience:

     The image of the Nigerian police became worse during the military era as the force became a ready tool of repression for incessive repressive military regimes.

3. Continual or successive; unceasing.
   • 1904, John Bulloch, John Alexander Henderson, Scottish Notes and Queries, page 124:

     Some Northern Murdochs may be of the same stock of the Murthacs of Rothes, heirs of the Pollocks, and progenitors through incessive heiresses of the Watsons and Leslies of Rothes.

   • 1978, George Geddie Patterson, W. James MacDonald, Patterson's History of Victoria County, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, →ISBN:

     We passed the Great Bras d'Or on the ice at the imminent risk of our lives, so rotten had the ice become owing to the effect of five or six days incessive thaw.

   • 1994, A. Balakrishnan Nair, The Government and Politics of Kerala:

     The Nadars diversified their professional activities and made their imprint on every profession through an incessive process of modernisation.

   • 2013, Kathleen Clare, The Anthology Of Porthos, →ISBN, page 190:

     He is a good man, but his incessive worrying is a bit annoying.

   • 2013, Debra J. Blood, My Husband Has Died, But That’s Not The Funny Part, →ISBN:

     So, why I started with my incessive nervous immediate questioning of, “Oh my God, did you lose your job?

4. Tending to incite or inflame; incensive.
   • 1866, The Freed-man - Volume 2, page 249:

     There is an incessive bravery about the book, that tells you at once that the writer is in the deepest sympathy with the great soul whem he portrays, and the cause for which the martyred one bled.

   • 1913, Ida Alexa Ross Wylie, The Daughter of Brahma, page 325:

     "Thou hast asked me who I am," He began in the same low incessive accents.

   • 1915, War-chronicle - Volume 2, page 39:

     In a dispatch dated 4th March 1911, Baron Guillaume mentions that in Germany, along the French frontier, an incessive propaganda is employed with the object of furthering the desertions from the German army to the French Foreign Legion.

   • 1917, United States Army war college, Instructions on the Operation of the Information Service and of the Terrestrial Observation Service of Artillery:

     He also shows him the results obtained by the artillery of the army corps (or by the heavy artillery of the army) in its distinctive fire, by means of incessive photographs of the positions fired on.

5. Insightful; deep and succinct; incisive.
   • 1903, The Tablet - Volume 102, page 622:

     We suppose cold, clear, incessive, and formal reasoning; the expression of the greatest possible amount of truth in the simplest and fewish possible words, and the avoidance of anything in the shape of high-flown or flowery language.

   • 1912, The Record of Sigma Alpha Epsilon - Volume 32, page 95:

     His preaching is characterized by spiritual insight, incessive utterance, luminous presentation of truth, and over it all there is the glow of a refined imagination which charms while it impresses.

   • 1979, C.. Pandeya, N. P. Jain, Glory of India - Volume 3, page 17:

     The present volume contains two of his most incessive and illuminating discourses on important aspects of Ayurveda.

   • 1969, Patricia Lillian Walker, Eugene Field's Years as a Chicago Journalist (1883-1895), page 71:

     Even long after he had achieved fame throughout the English-speaking world, Dennis wrote, he maintained a "keen interest in public affairs and his comments on men and measures were as admirably conceived and as incessive as ever."

6. Critical and accurate; incisive.
   • 1881, Calcutta Review, volume 73, page 76:

     Here he engaged in a controversy with Voltaire, in which he was lashed by the incessive wit and satire of his own countrymen, and obliged to retire to France, where he died at Basel in 1759.

   • 1879, The Australian Journal: A Weekly Record of Literature, Science, and Art:

     My dear Angelina completed the predicate for me with a voluminous appendix, annotated through the agency of her incessive and florid vocabulary.

   • 1994, O. M. Rao, Focus on North East Indian Christianity, →ISBN, page 85:

     We should offer incessive criticism of the conditions under which the work is done and at the same time show our ...

7. (biology) Intruding inward.
   • 1943 January, H.D. Rosenbaum, “Varicella and the Cornea*: A Case Report”, in American Journal of Ophthalmology, volume 26, number 1:

     On the right cheek, just below the incessive tearing, and only a mild redness.

   • 1951, Hans Pettersson, Nils Gunnar Jerlov, Börje Kullenberg, Reports of the Swedish Deep-Sea Expedition, 1947-1948, page 206:

     In the new genus Bathyopsurus, the incessive part and the lacinia (on the left mandible) are well developed.

8. Included.
   • 1889 -, The Academy - Volume 35, page 53:

     The opening sentence is very risky. " I found myself standing on my feet " is apt to destroy all proper solemnity of feeling by suggesting that it would, on the whole, have been more remarkable if the gentleman had found himself standing on his head. To " stand upon one's feet " is indeed excellent English; but in excellent English it always has (so far as we remember) an incessive sense — " to rise upon the feet and stand " — which is wanting here.

   • 2012, William Brown, “Monstrous cinema”, in New Review of Film and Television Studies, volume 10, number 4:

     ...that which lies very much within the frame, that which is incessant, or certainly 'incessive' (it lies within the frame), but which exceeds our perception not because invisible (out of frame) but in spite of being visible (in the frame).

9. (grammar) Synonym of inessive
   • 1990, Henning Andersen, E.F.K. Koerner, Historical Linguistics 1987, →ISBN:

     The Hungarian 'incessive' -ban/-ben (e.g., ha'z-ban “in the house”, ke'z-ben “in the hand”) arose from the postposition benn; today it appears in a non-case form only in adverbial usage with possessive suffixes (e.g., bennem “in me”, benned “in you”).

   • 1994, D. D. Sharma, Studies in Tibeto-Himalayan languages - Volume 4, →ISBN, page 110:

     In this too the loc. marker is identical with Acc. marker. Besides, various spatial relations of the loc. case, such as surfacessive (on, upon, etc.) incessive (in, inside of, within), possessive (with-in the possession ol), etc., are expressed with various sets of . - postpositions in different speeches under consideration (For their details see respective volumes of the 'Studies in T.H.L.' 1988-92).

   • 2016, E. Nolue Emenanjo, A Grammar of Contemporary Igbo: Constituents, Features and Processes, →ISBN:

     Indeed, in terms of semantic nuances, Igbo cases are more in line with the Fino-Ugric cases which express spatio-temporal relations thus: Interior: Incessive; talose; 'in the house'

10. (grammar) Durative.
    • 1967, A Reference Grammar of Hindi:

      The presence of the feature progression means that the activity denoted by the primary verb is understood as a succession of events indicated by this verb either directed towards a goal (pre-terminative) or directed from a point with its goal unspecified (post" inceptive). In this sense the pre-terminative succession can be confused with the incessive process (the explicator ) of a state of an event denoted by a verb.

    • 2005, Bernhard Hurch, Studies on Reduplication, →ISBN, page 591:

      In Thao, however, triplication does not express plurality but rather some sort of aspectual modification (continuative or incessive).

    • 2017, Josep Quer, SignGram Blueprint: A Guide to Sign Language Grammar Writing, →ISBN:

      As a further example of unclear cases, the so-called incessive – a fast recurrence of some typical properties - is included under the iterative by Rathmann (2005), but subsumed under the habitual by Wilbur (1987).

References

• “incessive”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• “incessive”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.