a. [f. L. consensu-s (see next) + -AL. In mod.F. consensuel.]
1. Relating to or involving consent. Consensual contract (in Rom. Law): a contract that requires only consent of the parties to render it obligatory: so consensual obligation.
1754. Erskine, Princ. Sc. Law (1809), 308. Contracts consensual, i. e. which might, by the Roman law, be perfected by sole consent.
1818. Colebrooke, Oblig. & Contracts, I. 14.
1880. Muirhead, trans. Gaius, III. § 89, note. The verbal and literal contracts are often spoken of by the civilians as formal contracts, in contradistinction to the real and consensual ones, which they call material. Ibid., 478. Consensual obligations were so called because a common understanding was sufficient to create them without any formality.
1881. Hatch, Bampt. Lect., vi. 145. The consensual jurisdiction to which the members of Christian societies submitted themselves.
2. Phys. Happening as if by consent, caused by sympathetic action: said of movements that take place through the action of the nervous system independently of the will, and spec. of movements caused by reflex action of the sensory nerve-centers on being stimulated through the organs of sense.
1800. Med. Jrnl., IV. 275. An increased action or local irritation, either idiopathic or consensual.
1839. Baly, trans. Müller’s Physiol., II. 930. [It] has a tendency to consensual action with its fellow nerve of the opposite side.
1864. H. Spencer, Illustr. Univ. Progr., 319. Doubtless we may pass gradually from the purely reflex, through the consensual, to the voluntary.
1874. Carpenter, Ment. Phys., I. ii. (1879), 57. The Sensori-motor or consensual actions in Man.
Hence Consensually adv., in a consensual manner, by consent.
1885. Eng. Mech., 19 June, 345. That the Budget … may be criticised, attacked, and even consensually or compulsorily amended.
1886. Sat. Rev., 9 Jan., 36. There are no means … whereby the powers of an Irish Parliament could be consensually so limited.
