appension

Noun

appension (countable and uncountable, plural appensions)

1. (obsolete, uncountable) The act of appending or attaching.
   • Over this Tohu or Nothing it was, that he stretched the North or Firmament, and then hang'd the Earth upon the same Nothing . But of this manner of appension somewhat more is to be said .1671, John Gregory, The Works of John Gregory, page 55
   • That he, John Incent, Public Notary, as abovesaid, being assumed and deputed in this present business of the election, for scribe of the acts, did witness and subscribe all the whole public decree or process of the election, written with his own hand, and made and reduced into that public and...1821, John Strype, The life & acts of Matthew Parker, page 105
2. (countable) Something that was appended; an addendum.
   • Yet Lydgate clearly reworks his ballade in other ways, for example the inclusion of Chaucer's 'Greseylde' and 'Rosamounde', which reaffirms the poetic genealogy cited by Chaucer himself at the close of the Troilus and by extension ratifies Lydgate's appension to it.2020, Kathleen A. Bishop, Standing in the Shadow of the Master?
3. (historical) A healing or protective charm.
   • And as it is thus in general, so in many particulars, as especially in being ignorant of many natural agents that do work at a great distance, and very occultly, both to help, and to hurt, as in the wapon salve, the sympathetic powder, the curing of diseases by mumial applications, but amulets...2015, Brian P. Levack, The Witchcraft Sourcebook:, page 378
   • Argerius Ferrarius, a physician in these daies of great account, doth saie, that for somuch as by no diet nor physicke anie disease can be so taken awaie or extinguished, but that certeine dregs and relikes will remaine: therefore physicians use physicall allilgations, appensions, preiapts...2023, Reginald Scot, Brinsley Nicholson, The Discovery of Witchcraft