costive

English

From Middle French costivé, ultimately from Latin constipatus (“constipated”).

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costive

Constipated.
- 1607 (first performance), [Francis Beaumont], The Knight of the Burning Pestle, London: […] [Nicholas Okes] for Walter Burre, […], published 1613, →OCLC, Act V, signature K3, recto:
  When I was mortall, this my costiue corps / Did lap vp Figs and Raisons in the Strand, / Where sitting I espi'd a louely Dame, / Whose maister wrought with Lingell and with All, / And vnder ground he vampied many a boote.
- 2004, Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty […], 1st US edition, New York, N.Y.: Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN, page 346:
  Melanie, who was used to Wani's costive memos, and even to dressing up the gist of a letter in her own words, stuck out her tongue in concentration as she took down Nick's old-fashioned periods and perplexing semicolons.
(informal) Miserly, parsimonious.