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gravamen

noun
/ɡɹəˈveɪmɛn/UK/ɡɹəˈveɪmən/US

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Late Latin gravāmen (“physical inconvenience”) and Medieval Latin gravāmen (“grievance”), from Latin gravāre + -men (suffix forming neuter nouns of the third declension). Gravāre is the present active infinitive of gravō (“to burden, weigh down; to oppress”), from gravis (“heavy; grave, serious; hard, troublesome”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *gʷreh₂- (“heavy”)) + -ō (suffix forming regular first-conjugation verbs). The plural form gravamina is derived from Late Latin gravāmina.

  1. derived from gravāmina
  2. derived from *gʷreh₂-✻ — “heavy”
  3. derived from gravāre
  4. derived from gravāmen — “grievance”
  5. learned borrowing from gravāmen — “physical inconvenience”

Definitions

  1. A grievance complained of.

  2. The essence or ground of a complaint.

    • [P]roperly, no evidence can be read here that was not read below, and if evidence, which ought to have been read there, was rejected, that ought to be the gravamen of the appeal.
    • Falsehood, which was in ordinary cases the gravamen of the complaint, was omitted altogether in the information against him.

  3. The essence or most important aspect of a piece of writing, a point of argument, etc.

    The essence or most important aspect of a piece of writing, a point of argument, etc.; the gist.

    • That neither Dr. Leask, nor myself, acted on such a principle, is the whole gravamen of our opponent's furious assaults upon us.
    • Prescription drug suppliers are more likely to add even unverified reports that stand as aberrations in pharmacoepidemiologic studies when they associate a use of the product with an appreciable gravamen of injury.
    • The grit of your argument—gravamen; I haven't used that in a long time since I practiced—the gravamen of your argument is that availability is the test, the key. […] Tell me where is the gravamen of your argument?
  4. ›+ 1 more definition

    1. A formal charge or complaint.

      • In an Appeal, whether from a Gravamen or the Sentence, an Inhibition is iſſued from the Superior Court to the Inferior, to ſtop Proceedings.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for gravamen. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA