abstersion

See also: abstersión

English

From either Old French or Medieval Latin abstertion, from Latin abstersus, past participle of abstergēo (“I wipe off or away”).

abstersion (countable and uncountable, plural abstersions)

(archaic) Act of wiping clean; a cleansing; a purging. [First attested around 1350 to 1470.][1]
- 1814, Sir Walter Scott, Waverley; or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since:
  Waverley ... was offered the patriarchal refreshment of a bath for the feet ... He was not, indeed, so luxuriously attended upon this occasion as the heroic travellers in the Odyssey; the task of ablution and abstersion being performed, not by a beautiful damsel, trained To chafe the limb, and pour the fragrant oil, but by a smoke-dried skinny old Highland woman, who did not seem to think herself much honoured by the duty imposed upon her...

the act of cleaning

Lesley Brown, editor-in-chief, William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, editors (2002), “abstersion”, in The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles, 5th edition, Oxford, New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 9.

abstersion (plural abstersions)

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