Defn: Wearing away; superficial waste. Tyndall.
ABLATITIOUS
Ab`la*ti"tious, a.
Defn: Diminishing; as, an ablatitious force. Sir J. Herschel.
ABLATIVE
Ab"la*tive, a. Etym: [F. ablatif, ablative, L. ablativus fr. ablatus.
See Ablation.]
1. Taking away or removing. [Obs.] Where the heart is forestalled with misopinion, ablative directions are found needful to unteach error, ere we can learn truth. Bp. Hall.
2. (Gram.)
Defn: Applied to one of the cases of the noun in Latin and some other languages, — the fundamental meaning of the case being removal, separation, or taking away.
ABLATIVE
Ab"la*tive, (Gram.)
Defn: The ablative case. ablative absolute, a construction in Latin, in which a noun in the ablative case has a participle (either expressed or implied), agreeing with it in gender, number, and case, both words forming a clause by themselves and being unconnected, grammatically, with the rest of the sentence; as, Tarquinio regnante, Pythagoras venit, i. e., Tarquinius reigning, Pythagoras came.
ABLAUT
Ab"laut, n. Etym: [Ger., off-sound; ab off + laut sound.] (Philol.)