penitent (penitent)

and n. [ of pænire, var. punire, punish, penknife This advice was inserted into the Penitential of England in the time of Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury. Jer. Taylor, Holy Dying, v. 5. The penitential , a book which only shrift-fathers or priests who heard shrifts, that is confe ions, might read, contained the penances decreed by the Church for the different kinds of sin. Rock , Church of our Fathers, III. ii. 19. 2t. One who has undergone penitential discipline. S. Butler , Hudibras, II. i. 819. penitentially (pen-i-ten's hal-i), adv. In a peni manner. punish. Hence, from L. pænitere, also penant (a doublet of penitent, n.), penitence, penance, penitential, penitentiary, impenitent, repent, repentance, etc.] I. a. 1. Sorry for sin or for of fense committed; contrite; troubled by a sense of guilt and resolved on amendment; repentant. Nor in the land of their captivity Humbled themselves, or penitent besought The God of their forefathers. Milton , P. R., iii. 421. The proud he tam'd, the penitent he cheer'd, Nor to rebuke the rich offender fear'd. Dryden , Character of a Good Parson, 1. 75. * pesnis, tail, penis, = Gr. πέος for * πέσος, penis; 2t. Doing penance; suffering. akin to MHG. visel, G. fisel, penis.] The male organ of copulation; the intromittent or copulatory organ of the male sex of any animal. The penis in the vertebrates is generally, in part at least, homologous with the organ so named in man, but not in the invertebrates; it is sometimes double, as in certain reptiles, crabs, etc. In some invertebrates the term is extended to organs which deposit spermatozoa without being intromittent. Many of the older writers on entomology included under this term all the external male organs of generation, dividing them into the phallus, or true intromittent organ, and the forceps or claspers used in copulation. The corresponding organ of the female sex in mammals is termed the clitoris. See cuts under Dendro cœla, Lepadidæ, Proteolepas, Alcippe, Balanus, Cestoidea, and Squillidæ. Certain Reptilia po e a pair of eversible copulatory organs situated in integumentary sacs, one on each side of the cloaca; but it does not appear in what manner these penes are morphologically related to those of the Huxley , Anat. Vert., p. 99. higher Vertebrata.