[ad. L. cadent-em, pr. pple. of cad-ĕre to fall.]
1. Falling (literally). Obs. or arch.
1605. Shaks., Lear, I. iv. 307. With cadent Teares fret Channels in her cheekes.
1659. J. Arrowsmith, Chain Princ., 200. We ourselves have seen him Antichrist cadent.
1855. Bailey, Mystic, 9. The moaning winds and cadent waters.
2. Astrol. Of a planet: Going down; in a sign opposite to that of its exaltation.
‘Cadent Houses are the third, sixth, ninth and twelfth House of a Scheme or figure of the Heavens, being those that are next from the Angles’ (Phillips, 1696).
1586. Lupton, Thous. Notable Th. (1650), 235. If the part of Fortune be cadent from the Ascendent, [etc].
1671. Blagrave, Astrol. Physick, 164. Fixt Signs, and cadent Houses alwayes signifie the greatest distances.
3. Falling (rhythmically); having cadence.
1613. Sir E. Hoby, Counter-snarle, 13. Il current and worse cadent lines.
1857. Emerson, Poems, 134. Far within those cadent pauses.
1859. F. K. Harford, Martyrs of Lyons, 24. Unfailing lips those cadent strains prolong.
4. Geol. Applied by Prof. H. Rogers to the tenth of his 15 divisions of the palæozoic strata of the Alleghanies, corresponding to the lower middle Devonian of British geologists.
