English

Adjective

accumbent ‎(comparative more accumbent, superlative most accumbent)

1. Leaning or reclining, as the ancients did at their meals.
   • 1998, Anne Markham Schulz, Giammaria Mosca called Padovano: a Renaissance sculptor in Italy and Poland, ISBN 9780271016740, page 136:

     Together his accumbent pose and closed eyes denoted sleep, as an alternative to death, which the stiff, recumbent pose of previous effigies had embodied.

2. (botany) Lying against anything, as one part of a leaf against another leaf
   • 1840, William Baxter, British phænogamous botany, volume 5:

     Distinguished from other genera, with accumbent cotyledons, in the same class and order, by the entire, nearly equal petals; and the dehiscent, nearly entirely pouch, of 2, 1- or many-seeded cells, a broad dissepiment (septum), and nearly flat valves.

Related terms

• accumb
• accumbency
• accubation
• recumbent

Translations

Noun

accumbent ‎(plural accumbents)

1. One who rests in an accumbent position, especially at table.
   • 1630, Bishop Joseph Hall, Occasional Meditations:

     What a pennance must be done by every accumbent, in sitting out the passage through all these dishes; what a task the stomach must be put to in the concoction of so many mixtures.

   • 1903, “What Is Oblomovisn”, in Leo Wiener, editor, Anthology of Russian Literature from the Earliest Period to the, translation of original by Nikolay Aleksandrovich Dobrolyubov, page 275:

     Let us, indeed, see how the point of view has changed which was held in regard to those cultivated and glib accumbents who in former days were taken for real social workers.

   • 2014, Trevor R. Bryce, Ancient Syria: A Three Thousand Year History

     Said also to be fond of playing practical jokes, he was apparently in the habit of placing his dinner guests on inflated cushions, which were contrived to deflate suddenly, sending their unsuspecting accumbents sprawling under the tables.

Latin

Verb

accumbent

1. third-person plural future active indicative of accumbō