assertion

[In Fr. a ertion; Ital. a erzione; Ital. a ertio = (1) a formal declaration regarding the freedom or servitude of any one; (2) an a ertion generally.] 1. The act of a erting, affirming, or declaring positively. 2. The statement a erted or affirmed positively. "The government, on full consideration, gave credit to his a ertion that he had been guilty of a double treason."-Macaulay: Hist. Eng . , ch. xxi. as-sert-ive, a. [In Fr. a ert if.] With strong a ertion; dogmatical, peremptory. "He was not so fond of the principles he undertook to illustrate as to boast their certainty, proposing them not in a confident and a ertive form, but as probabilities and hypotheses."-Glanville. as-sert-ive-ly, adv. [Eng. a ertive; -ly.] So as to a ert; affirmatively. "Read it interrogatively, and it is as strong for Soto and the Do mini cans, as if it were read a ertively, for Catherine and the Jesuits."- Bp . Bedell: Letters, p. 408.