sb. pl. Forms: 5–8 feces, -is, 6 fecies, fesses, (8 feeces), 7– fæces. [a. L. fæces pl. of fæx dregs.]

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  1.  Sediment; dregs, lees, subsidence, refuse.

2

1460–70.  Bk. Quintessence, I. 4. Rotun fecis of wiyn.

3

1527.  Andrew, Brunswyke’s Distyll. Waters, B vij. Euery water shold be cast upon his owne feces.

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1594.  Plat, The Jewell House of Art and Nature, II. 40. The Lee or fæces of ye best sallet oyle.

5

1655.  Culpepper, Riverius, I. ii. 13. The fecies or residents of the Powder in the bottom.

6

1742.  Lond. & Country Brew., I. (ed. 4), 73. The Fæces or Sediment which causes the Fermentation to be fierce or mild.

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1811.  A. T. Thomson, Lond. Disp. (1818), 524. Set apart the liquor, that the fæces … may subside.

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  2.  Waste matter that is discharged from the bowels; excrement.

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1639.  Beaumont & Fletcher, M. Thomas, II. iii.

          3 Phys.  Do you mark the fæces?
’Tis a most pestilent contagious fever.

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1732.  Arbuthnot, Rules of Diet, 293. If there be any Acrimony in the Fæces, Urine, Sweat.

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1748.  Hartley, Observations on Man, I. i. 96. The Impressions which the Aliment, Bile, and Fæces, make upon the villous Coat.

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1802.  Med. Jrnl., VIII. 369. The expulsion of the fæces.

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1872.  T. H. Huxley, Lessons in Elementary Physiology, vi. 139. The residue, mixed up with certain secretions of the intestines, leaves the body as the fæces.

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