medItate

i. & l. [Lat. med it at us, pa. par. of meditor; Fr. méditer; Ital. med it are; Sp. med i tar.] A. In trans.: To dwell or ponder on anything in the mind; to turn or revolve any subject in the mind; to muse, to cogitate, to ruminate; to give one's self up to mental contemplation. "The general paused for a moment to meditate on his situation."- Macaulay : Hist . Eng . , ch. xiii. IMG:content-1054.png:[blocks in formation] 2. To plan, to contrive, to intend, to excogitate. měd-i-ta-ti-ō (tias shi), s . [Lat. meditation (q. v.).] (See the compound.) meditatio fuge, s. Scots Law : A term applied to the state of a debtor who meditates flight in order to avoid the payment of his debts. When a creditor has just and probable grounds for making oath that his debtor, whether native or foreign, is meditating flight, he can obtain a warrant from any judge of the Court of Se ion, any sheriff, magistrate of a burgh, or justice of the peace, to apprehend and detain such debtor. Such a warrant is termed a meditatio fugæ warrant, but it has become practically obsolete since the pa ing of the Debtors (Scotland) Act of 1881, by which imprisonment for debt was abolished, except in a few special cases. měd-I-tā-tion, s. [Fr., from Lat. meditationem, acc us. of meditatio, from med it at us, pa. par. of meditor =to meditate (q. v.).) 1. The act or state of meditating; deep thought; close or continued contemplation or reflection; musing. "He perhaps might, with care and meditation , have rivalled Lucretius." -Macaulay : Hist . Eng . , ch. iii. 2. That which is the result of thought or reflection. †měd-1-tā-tion-Ist, s . [Eng. meditation; -ist.] A writer or composer of meditations. "Hervey the meditation ist's [style] a weedy one." Southey: The Doctor , interch. xxii.