a. [ad. L. vīcīnāl-is, f. vīcīn-us neighbor. So OF. and F. vicinal.]
1. ‘Belonging to neighbours or neighbourhood.’
1623. Cockeram, I.
1656. Blount, Glossogr.
1727. Bailey (vol. II.).
2. Vicinal way or road, a local common way as distinguished from a highway; a by-road or cross-road.
1677. Plot, Oxfordsh., 314. Of these [public ways] amongst the Romans some were called publick κατ᾽ ἐξοχὴν, and others Vicinal.
1727. Magna Brit. & Hib., IV. 210/2. Among the Vicinal Ways, or Chemini minores, there is also one in this County.
1790. Pennant, London (1813), 13. A vicinal way went under Aldgate … towards Oldford.
1791. Newte, Tour Eng. & Scot., 259. From this permanent station, a vicinal or cross road is carried through Glenartney.
1807. G. Chalmers, Caledonia, I. I. iv. 135. From this place … there probably went off a vicinal way to the Roman stations in Tweedale.
1812. J. Bigland, Beauties Eng. & Wales, XVI. 15. This … appears to have been only a vicinal road of the Romans.
1878. Hardy, Ret. Native, I. i. In many portions of its course it overlaid an old vicinal way, which branched from the great Western road of the Romans.
b. Similarly with other sbs.
1799. R. Warner, Walk thro’ W. Counties (1800), 8. The operations of husbandry have depressed, and indeed obliterated in many places, this grand vicinal Dorsum.
1851. D. Wilson, Preh. Ann., II. III. ii. 73. A small vicinal camp on the banks of the Kirble.
1901. Speaker, 31 Aug., 618. He saw a good-looking curé smoking in a vicinal railway.
3. Neighboring, adjacent, near.
1739. Maitland, Hist. London, I. ii. 10/1. The noisom Vapours incessantly emitted from that and the vicinal Marshes.
1790. Phil. Trans., LXXX. 232. In vicinal situations, the next best mode to angular measurement is no doubt that of marking, by means of well-regulated clocks,… the repeated … explosion of light.
1842. Proc. Lond. Electr. Soc. (1843), 355. Sparks will pass from such a wire, and, therefore, from a lightning-rod, to vicinal conducting bodies.
b. Math. and Min. Nearly coincident with a given surface or plane.
1895. Cayley, Math. Papers, VIII. 302. I investigate the values of a, b,… for the point P′ on the vicinal surface. Ibid., 309. The lines which … correspond to the principal tangents of the vicinal surface must be the principal tangents of the given surface.
c. Org. Chem. Of substituted groups or atoms: Lying in consecutive order; adjacent to each other.
1898. J. Wade, Introd. Org. Chem., 288. With regard to the higher substitution products … there should be three classes of tri-derivatives, and only three…, all conceivable arrangements being reducible to the positions 1:2:3, or vicinal, 1:2:4, or unsymmetrical, and 1:3:5, or symmetrical.
1900. E. F. Smith, trans. Richter’s Org. Chem., II. 39. We call them adjacent … or … vicinal.
4. Connected with the relations between a person and his neighbors.
1855. Jrnl. R. Agric. Soc., XVI. II. 570. No harm, agricultural or fiscal, vicinal or political, shall betide the giver of such … assistance.
