Find the word definition

Crossword clues for abeyance

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
abeyance
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ VERB
fall
▪ The match fell into abeyance when the Druids had too few golfing Brothers.
▪ The following year Civil War was declared, and drainage works fell into abeyance.
▪ The Forest law fell into abeyance.
▪ The umbrella group we'd formed in 1987 had fallen into abeyance, but the name still meant something.
▪ The result is that any notion of musical futurism has fallen into abeyance.
▪ In some forests the local Forest courts also had fallen into abeyance.
hold
▪ A sizeable reservoir of homosexuality, which had been held in abeyance, suddenly stirred in the town.
▪ They seem to know that conscious thought must be held in abeyance.
▪ I have held myself in abeyance.
▪ These things could be held in abeyance for a time, while he thought only of the girl herself.
▪ Positions and statuses are held in abeyance until the following season until they can be redefined and re-established.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ For some time thereafter matters of defence, policy and filial duties were in abeyance.
▪ In abeyance at the moment is a cricket pitch.
▪ Like a stranger in a strange land, he travelled with his other life in abeyance.
▪ The Basqueness that is in abeyance in Biarritz returns in full as you drive south from there towards the frontier.
▪ The following year Civil War was declared, and drainage works fell into abeyance.
▪ Theoretically, she can dissolve Parliament without advice, but the right has been in abeyance for years.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Abeyance

Abeyance \A*bey"ance\, n. [OF. abeance expectation, longing; a (L. ad) + baer, beer, to gape, to look with open mouth, to expect, F. bayer, LL. badare to gape.]

  1. (Law) Expectancy; condition of being undetermined.

    Note: When there is no person in existence in whom an inheritance (or a dignity) can vest, it is said to be in abeyance, that is, in expectation; the law considering it as always potentially existing, and ready to vest whenever a proper owner appears.
    --Blackstone.

  2. Suspension; temporary suppression.

    Keeping the sympathies of love and admiration in a dormant state, or state of abeyance.
    --De Quincey.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
abeyance

1520s, from Anglo-French abeiance "suspension," also "expectation (especially in a lawsuit)," from Old French abeance "aspiration, desire," noun of condition of abeer "aspire after, gape" from à "at" (see ad-) + ba(y)er "be open," from Latin *batare "to yawn, gape" (see abash).\n

\nOriginally in French a legal term, "condition of a person in expectation or hope of receiving property;" it turned around in English law to mean "condition of property temporarily without an owner" (1650s). Root baer is also the source of English bay (n.2) "recessed space," as in "bay window."

Wiktionary
abeyance

n. 1 (context legal English) expectancy; condition of ownership of real property being undetermined; lapse in succession of ownership of estate, or title. (Late 16th century)(R:SOED5: page=4) 2 suspension; temporary suppression; dormant condition. (Mid 17th century) 3 (context heraldry English) expectancy of a title, its right in existence but its exercise suspended.

WordNet
abeyance

n. temporary cessation or suspension [syn: suspension]

Wikipedia
Abeyance

Abeyance (from the Old French abeance meaning "gaping") is a state of expectancy in respect of property, titles or office, when the right to them is not vested in any one person, but awaits the appearance or determination of the true owner. In law, the term abeyance can only be applied to such future estates as have not yet vested or possibly may not vest. For example, an estate is granted to A for life, with remainder to the heir of B. During B's lifetime, the remainder is in abeyance, for until the death of B it is uncertain who is B's heir. Similarly the freehold of a benefice, on the death of the incumbent, is said to be in abeyance until the next incumbent takes possession.

The term hold in abeyance is used in lawsuits and court cases when a case is temporarily put on hold.

Usage examples of "abeyance".

Scott Velie commenced his prepared speech as he sat, holding in abeyance his moment for rising, which was timed to occur at the delivery of a key sentence halfway into his brief statement.

Had it not been for a determined English professor named Arthur Holmes, the quest might well have fallen into abeyance altogether.

We may, however, omit for the present any consideration of the particular providence, that beforehand decision which accomplishes or holds things in abeyance to some good purpose and gives or withholds in our own regard: when we have established the Universal Providence which we affirm, we can link the secondary with it.

When their knavery is found out people turn it into a joke and laugh, but in the midst of the merriment another mountebank makes his appearance, who does something more wonderful than those who preceded him, and he makes his fortune, whilst the scoffing of the people is in abeyance.

Archbishop of Rhames met formally for the first time the next morning: Sedry was subdued, his Aura, his charismatic smile in abeyance, but there was reason for that.

From these, and from her strange fit of tenderness, I guessed what was looming in the distance--a future which my father constantly held in terrorem over me, though successive illness had kept it in abeyance.

By the end of the decade powerful immunosuppressive drugs, such as 6-mercaptopurine, had been shown to be capable of holding in abeyance the reactivity of dogs to renal homografts, and soon afterward this principle was successfully extended to man.

The latest on core emission is that condition starquake is now in abeyance.

The latter enterprise must wait upon the former, so for a fortnight all operations were in abeyance while the flying columns of the British endeavoured to run down their extremely active and energetic antagonist.

If the soul, on abandoning its place in the Supreme, revives its memories of the lower, it must have in some form possessed them even there though the activity of the beings in that realm kept them in abeyance: they could not be in the nature of impressions permanently adopted--a notion which would entail absurdities--but were no more than a potentiality realized after return.

Built as part of a gigantic project to harness the mighty tides that pour in from the great Bay of Fundy, the village was now basking in temporary abeyance, almost deserted, yet not a ghost town, for proponents of the Quoddy Project were still working to revive the plan.

The rise of the World Administrative Center of their Faith, within the precincts and under the shadow of its World Spiritual Center, a process that has been kept in abeyance for well nigh thirty years, whilst the machinery of the national and local institutions of a nascent Order was being erected and perfected, presents them with an opportunity which, as the champion-builders of that Order and the torchbearers of an as yet unborn civilization, they must seize with alacrity, resolution and utter consecration.

She systematically took over the Gauntlet, bringing all its perils under her own command, holding them in abeyance wth spells and words of Enforcement.

Logic said the traitor was Yueh, but he held final decision in abeyance.

It was not difficult to make out that she was indirectly firing at me, and I prepared myself for the ostracism which I was expecting, but which, however, she kept in abeyance fully for an hour.