dementation

English edit

Etymology edit

Noun edit

dementation (uncountable)

(archaic) The act of depriving of reason; madness.
- 1654, Richard Whitlock, Zootomia; Or, Observations on the Present Manners of the English:
  […] and so they aver to be drunk, or accessory to anothers Distemper (especially supposing the Distemper under command from breaking out into any other sins besides its own dementation, or stupidity) to be a lesse sin, than to call one Drunkard, on the bare sight of him in a Distemper, or but one slender Information.

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 The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.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 “dementation”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)