Now rare or Obs. [ad. L. vellicātio, noun of action f. vellicāre to VELLICATE. Cf. older F. vellication (Cotgr.), It. vellicazione, Sp. velicacion, Pg. vellicação.]
1. The action or process of pulling or twitching; irritation or stimulation by means of small or sharp points; titillation or tickling.
1623. Cockeram, I. Vellication, plucking.
1626. Bacon, Sylva, § 37. Therfore we see that almost all Purgers have a kind of Twiching and vellication.
1655. Culpepper, etc., Riverius, VI. i. 130. The Nerve and Membrane in the hole of the Tooth … which doth … suffer distension and vellication.
a. 1693. Urquhart’s Rabelais, III. xlv. (1694), 371. Is it not daily seen how School-masters … shake the Heads of their Disciples … that, by this Erection, Vellication, stretching and pulling their Ears … they may stir them up?
1718. Quincy, Compl. Disp., 177. The Vellication or Irritation of the Fibres and Membranes.
1794–6. E. Darwin, Zoon. (1801), I. 281. Here the pleasurable idea of playfulness coincides with the vellication.
1823–7. Good, Study Med. (1829), I. 547. The vellication of a hair-brush contrived for the purpose. Ibid., IV. 690. The best artificial means of obtaining so salutary an action is by a free and laborious process of friction, vellication or shampooing.
2. An instance or occasion of this; also, a twitching or convulsive movement, esp. of a muscle or other part of the body.
1665. Collection Plague Pieces (1721), 21. There happens a Vellication of the nervous Parts.
1686. Plot, Staffordsh., 302. Severe vellications in the Intestines by sharp humors.
1723. Stukeley, in Mem. (1882), I. 69. After some vellications and preludes the Gout seiz’d upon my right foot.
1756. C. Lucas, Ess. Waters, II. 67. Sharp uneasy vellications of the skin.
1783. Johnson, Lett. (1788), II. 339. These vellications of my breast shorten my breath.
transf. 1781. Johnson, Prayers & Medit. (1817), 193. At night, I had some mental vellications, or revulsions.
