adjuration

Noun

adjuration (countable and uncountable, plural adjurations)

1. A grave warning.
   • The visitor, observing that she held the door on the inside, and that, when the uncle tried to open it, there was a sharp adjuration of 'Don't, stupid!' and an appearance of loose stocking and flannel, concluded that the young lady was in an undress.1855 December – 1857 June, Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1857, →OCLC
2. A solemn oath.
   • The populists were wrong, said Plekhanov, to blame the Marxists on the ground that, as they held socialism to be a product of the evolution of capitalism, they must in Russia be allies of the bourgeoisie: the laws of history could not be bent by adjurations or the purest of revolutionary motives.1978 [1976], Leszek Kołakowski, translated by P[aul] S[teven] Falla, Main Currents of Marxism, volume II: The Golden Age, Oxford: Clarendon Press, translation of Główne nurty marksizmu: rozwój (in...