receptary

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English[edit]

Adjective[edit]

receptary (not comparable)

  1. (obsolete) Generally or popularly admitted or received.
    • 1646, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica[1], London: Edw. Dod & Nath. Ekins, published 1650, Book I, p. 25:
      [] that famous Philosopher of Naples, Baptista Porta; in whose works, although there be contained many excellent things, and verified upon his own experience, yet are there many also receptary, and such as will not endure the test.

Noun[edit]

receptary (plural receptaries)

  1. (obsolete) That which is received.
    • 1646, Thomas Browne, “To the Reader”, in Pseudodoxia Epidemica[2], London: Edw. Dod & Nath. Ekins, published 1650:
      [] nor can they which behold the present state of things, and controversie of points so long received in Divinity, condemn our sober enquiries in the doubtfull appertinancies of Arts, and Receptaries of Philosophy.
  2. (historical, pharmacy, pharmacology) A book of pharmacological recipes, incantations or charms.
    • 1898, Marcellin Berthelot, “Ancient and Mediæval Chemistry” in Men of Achievement: Inventors and Scientists, Library of Inspiration and Achievement, edited by Edward Everett Hale, New York: The University Society, 1902, p. 306,[3]
      It is known that the recipes of therapeutics and materia medica have been preserved in a parallel way by practice, which has never ceased, in the Receptaries and other Latin treatises; these treatises, translated from the Greek during the period of the Roman Empire, and compiled in the first and second centuries, passed from hand to hand, and were copied frequently during the earlier portions of the Middle Ages.
    • 1999, Richard Gordon, “Imagining Greek and Roman Magic”, in Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: Ancient Greece and Rome[4], London: Athlone, p:
      Although one of the rules of the genre of the receptary, like that of the traditional cookery book, was that editorial comment be severely restricted, many recipes begin or end with a simple statement of their marvellous power []
    • 2010, Esther Cohen, The Modulated Scream: Pain in Late Medieval Culture[5], University of Chicago Press, Part I, Chapter 3, p. 95:
      Incantations were passed on from receptary to receptary, with little difference between the learned and the popular.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “receptary”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)