essoin
English edit
Alternative forms edit
Etymology edit
Inherited from Middle English essoyne, from Old French essoignier, from Medieval Latin exoniō, essoniō (“excuse oneself; accept an excuse”), from ex- + sonium + -ō, sonium being from Proto-West Germanic *sunnju (“care, need”).
Pronunciation edit
Verb edit
essoin (third-person singular simple present essoins, present participle essoining, simple past and past participle essoined)
- (UK, law, transitive) To excuse for failure to appear in court.
- 1633, Francis Quarles, Divine Poems:
- I'll not essoin thee.
Derived terms edit
Noun edit
essoin
- (UK, law, obsolete) An excuse for not appearing in court at the return of process; the allegation of an excuse to the court.
- (obsolete) Excuse; exemption.
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 20:
- From euery worke he chalenged essoyne.
Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “essoin”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)