appension

appension (countable and uncountable, plural appensions)

1. (obsolete, uncountable) The act of appending or attaching.
   • 1671, John Gregory, The Works of John Gregory, page 55:

     Over this Tohu or Nothing it was, that he stretched the North or Firmament, and then hang'd the Earth upon the same Nothing . But of this manner of appension somewhat more is to be said .

   • 1821, John Strype, The life & acts of Matthew Parker, page 105:

     That he, John Incent, Public Notary, as abovesaid, being assumed and deputed in this present business of the election, for scribe of the acts, did witness and subscribe all the whole public decree or process of the election, written with his own hand, and made and reduced into that public and authentic form, [as it stands in the register,] and subscribed with the addition of his name and surname, and signed with his own accustomed sign, with the appension of the common seal of the Dean and Chapter; in faith and testimony of all and singular the premises; being thereunto especially asked and required .

   • 1843, Robert Bruce, ‎William Cunningham, Sermons, page 71:

     Looke quhat it is be nature; that same thing is it, and na farther, gif it be not hangin to some evident; it is only the appension to the evident that makes men to count it ane seal; therefore it is nathing esteemed but being hung to the evident.

   • 2019, Gerald Bray, Documents of the English Reformation:

     that is to say, if the tax extend to four pounds or above, by reason whereof the dispensation, licence, faculty, rescript, or writing, which shall pass by the said archbishop's seal, must be confirmed by the appension of the great seal, then the said tax so extending to four pounds or above shall be divided into three parts, whereof two shall be perceived by the said clerk of the chancery to be appointed as is aforesaid, to the use of your highness, your heirs and successors, and to the use of the lord chancellor, or the keeper of the great seal for the time being, and to the use of the said clerk, in such wise as hereafter shall be declared;

2. (countable) Something that was appended; an addendum.
   • 2020, Kathleen A. Bishop, Standing in the Shadow of the Master?:

     Yet Lydgate clearly reworks his ballade in other ways, for example the inclusion of Chaucer's 'Greseylde' and 'Rosamounde', which reaffirms the poetic genealogy cited by Chaucer himself at the close of the Troilus and by extension ratifies Lydgate's appension to it.

3. (historical) A healing or protective charm.
   • 2015, Brian P. Levack, The Witchcraft Sourcebook:, page 378:

     And as it is thus in general, so in many particulars, as especially in being ignorant of many natural agents that do work at a great distance, and very occultly, both to help, and to hurt, as in the wapon salve, the sympathetic powder, the curing of diseases by mumial applications, but amulets, appensions, and transplantions, which all have been, and commonly are ascribed unto Satan, when they are truly wrought by natural operations.

   • 2023, Reginald Scot, ‎Brinsley Nicholson, The Discovery of Witchcraft:

     Argerius Ferrarius, a physician in these daies of great account, doth saie, that for somuch as by no diet nor physicke anie disease can be so taken awaie or extinguished, but that certeine dregs and relikes will remaine: therefore physicians use physicall allilgations, appensions, preiapts, amulets, charmes, characters, &c., which he supposeth maie doo good; but harme he is sure they can doo none: urging that it is necessarie and expedient for a physician to leave nothing undone that may be devised for his patients recoverie; and that by such meanes manie great cures are done.