costive

Adjective

costive (comparative more costive, superlative most costive)

1. Constipated.
   • When I was mortall, this my costiue corps / Did lap vp Figs and Raisons in the Strand, / Where sitting I espi'd a louely Dame, / Whose maister wrought with Lingell and with All, / And vnder ground he vampied many a boote.1607 (first performance), [Francis Beaumont], The Knight of the Burning Pestle, London: […] [Nicholas Okes] for Walter Burre, […], published 1613, →OCLC, Act V, signature K3, recto
   • Is it fit——goodnatured man! thou should’st sit up, with the wound upon thy groin, whole nights baking thy blood with hectic watchings?——Alas! ’twill exasperate thy symptoms,—check thy perspirations—evaporate thy spirits—waste thy animal strength, dry up thy radical moisture, bring thee into a...1659, Laurence Sterne, chapter XXVIII, in The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
2. (informal) Miserly, parsimonious.
   • Well, the shoemaker and his wife, Louise, may have been poor, needy, indigent, destitute, impecunious and impoverished — at least before the elves came along — but they had never been parsimonious, costive, miserly, penny-pinching or stinting. They were far from being avaricious, rapacious, mean or...2006 July 1, Hugh Conlon, Nine Familiar Fables, Lulu.com, →ISBN, page 73
   • For quotations using this term, see Citations:costive.