[f. SUBSTANTIATE: see -ATION.]
1. Embodiment. rare.
1760–72. H. Brooke, Fool of Qual. (1809), IV. 87. Her whole form seemed a condensing or substantiation of harmony and light.
c. 1817. Fuseli, Lect. Painting, x. (1848), 528. These works are commonly considered as the produce of the school of Phidias, and the substantiation of his principles.
2. (See quot.)
1835. Coleridge, in Fraser’s Mag., XII. 623/1. All attempts at philosophical explication, commenced in an effort of abstraction, aided by another function of the mind, for which I know no better name than substantiation; the identity of the thinker’s own consciousness … was confounded with, and substituted for, the real substance of the thing.
3. The substitution of substance for shadow.
1863. A. B. Grosart, Small Sins (ed. 2), 38. What was thus shadowed out and prefigured in the Old Testament received … substantiation in the New Testament.
1870. Lowell, Study Wind. (1871), 279. This substantiation of shadows.
4. The making good or proving a statement, etc.
1861. E. Garbett, Bible & Its Critics, i. 3. Such arguments, could they be substantiated, would destroy the Christian revelation at a blow. But this substantiation is found to be impossible.
1884. American, VIII. 379. The fact as claimed will find lasting substantiation.
1886. Pall Mall Gaz., 7 Dec., 7/1. He failed to cite a single case in substantiation of his words.
