alienation (alyenashon)

[ tinguished from inheritance. A devise of real property is regarded as an alienation. IMG:content-0495.png:[blocks in formation] We keep apart when we have quarrelled, expre ourselves in well-bred phrases, and in this way preserve a dignified alienation, George Eliot, Mill on the Flo , i. 5. She seemed, also, conscious of a cause, to me unknown, for the gradual alienation of my regard. Poe, Tales, I. 471. ( d ) Deprivation, or partial deprivation, of mental faculties; derangement; insanity. If a person of acknowledged probity and of known purity of life were suddenly to do something gro ly immoral, and it were impo ible to discover any motive for his strange and aberrant deed, we should ascribe it to an alienation of nature, and say that he must be mad. Maudsley , Body and Will, p. 10. An