[as if ad. L. ēmasculātiōn-em, noun of action f. ēmasculā-re to EMASCULATE.]
1. The action or process of depriving of virility; the state of impotence.
1623. Cockeram, II. A Gelding of a man, emasculation.
1721–1800. Bailey, Emasculation, a Gelding, Unmanning, or making Effeminate.
1849. Grote, Greece (1862), V. II. lxii. 367. Tying down the patient while the process of emasculation was being consummated.
2. fig. The depriving of force, vigor or manliness; making weak or effeminate; prudish expurgation of a literary work.
1654. Gayton, Pleas. Notes, I. vi. 22. The emasculations were some Scotch mans.
1815. Southey, Lett. (1856), II. 393. As for his emasculations, they must be submitted to.
1865. Pall Mall Gaz., 12 Oct., 1/1. Centuries of emasculation and oppression under foreign and domestic tyranny.
1886. J. Ebsworth, in Roxb. Ball. (1886), VI. 198. This emasculation looks like the notorious Lady Wardlaw’s handiwork.
