From Middle English meynprise, maynprise, from Anglo-Norman mainprise.
mainprise (countable and uncountable, plural mainprises)
mainprise (third-person singular simple present mainprises, present participle mainprising, simple past and past participle mainprised)
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 The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.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 “mainprise”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)
mainprise oblique singular, f (oblique plural mainprises, nominative singular mainprise, nominative plural mainprises)