a. [Formed as prec. + -ORY.] = SUBSULTIVE.
1638. Rawley, trans. Bacon’s Life & Death, 406. The Inordinate, and Subsultorie, Motion of the Spirits.
1715. Phil. Trans., XXIX. 326. Palpitation of the Heart, whose … prodigious subsultory Motion … was easily felt.
1742. Hort, Instr. Clergy, 10. I am levelling this rule against that subsultory way of delivery that rises like a storm … and presently sinks into a dead calm.
1758. L. Temple, Sketches (ed. 2), 40. The Numbers ought to be accommodated to the Passion:… they ought … to run somewhat rambling and irregular, and often rapid and subsultory.
1822–7. Good, Study Med. (1829), IV. 448. Clonus Palpitatio. Palpitation. Subsultory vibration of the heart or arteries.
1843. Blackw. Mag., LIV. 683/2. That subsultory movement from almost passive surveillance to the most intense development of power.
1887. Science (U.S.), 20 May, 495/2. Within this tract, except near the edges of it, the motion was most conspicuously of subsultory character.
1905. Edin. Rev., April, 304. Shoals of deep-sea fish, killed by the impact of subsultory water.
1909. Westm. Gaz., 20 Jan., 9/3. A strong subsultory and undulatory shock, lasting six seconds.
absol. 1841. De Quincey, Style, I. Wks. 1858, XI. 197. Flippancy opposed to solemnity, the subsultory to the continuous.
So Subsultorily adv., by sudden bounds or starts; Subsultorious a. = SUBSULTORY.
1626. Bacon, Sylva, § 326. The Spirits doe spread themselues Euen, and moue not *Subsultorily.
1898. in Syd. Soc. Lex.
1650. H. More, Observ., in Enthus. Tri., etc. (1656), 75. Meer vagrant imaginations seated in your own *subsultorious and skipjack phansie onely.
