Pl. tentamina. [L. tentāmen, f. tentāre = temptāre to try: see TEMPT.] An attempt, trial, experiment.
1673. Marvell, Reh. Transp., II. 284. After this Tentamen of your veracity you tax me for saying, ‘’Tis demonstrable [etc.].’
1736. Chesterf., in Fog’s Jrnl., No. 376. An essay or tentamen to some greater design.
1804. Vind. J. T. Troy, 166. It might perhaps have given more eclat to this work, if, in his pompous tentamen of translating a part of a Dictatus of Gregory IX, he had succeeded better in making out the three first Latin words.
1863. N. W. Senior, Biog. Sk., 387. [Bacon’s Essays] were intended,… as the word essay in its original acceptation expresses, to be tentamina; not finished treatises, but sketches, to be filled up by the reader.
