semperlenity

semperlenity

English

Etymology

semper- +‎ lenity

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: sĕm'pəlĕʹnĭtĭ, IPA^(key): /ˌsɛmpəˈlɛnɪtɪ/

Noun

semperlenity (uncountable)

1. (archaic, rare) Unfaltering leniency; unvarying gentleness deriving from habituated or constitutional disposition.
   • 1740–6: William Master, A.M.^?, The Ministerial Duty Set Forth: In an Anniversary Sermon Preached before the University of Oxford, on the Last Sunday in June, 1740, page 33

     […] bility and Semperlenity, and Dead Calmneſs of Temper, or Want of Anger in the Subject?

   • 1772?: George Horne [aut.] and Vaughan Thomas [ed.], A Letter to the Right Hon. the Lord North, Chancellor of the University of Oxford, pages 4–5

     If, when convinced itself of the truth and rectitude of this profession and mode, it suffer the teachers of those who dissent^a from them to neglect such parts of the former as do not seem strictly essential to the being of Christianity, and to frame a form of worship, or to reject all forms as they think fit, it acts with a moderation that ought to satisfy, and even gratify, the recusants. But if it extend its indulgence so far as to suffer its Articles of Religion and its form of worship to be unreservedly vilified, and treated, daily and hourly, with the grossest abuses, and even charged with blasphemy; and such doctrines to be openly avowed as, according to its own faith, are no better than downright blasphemies; it then exceeds the bounds of moderation, and falls into that extreme of semperlenity^✸ and unconcern for the honour of our God and Saviour, which forebode the downfal of that Religion, which it has, on the most convincing reasons, espoused.

References

• The English Dictionarie, or, An Interpreter of Hard English Words by Henry Cockeram (1623), volume II
  Accustomed Gentlenesse, Semperlenity.
• “semper-lenity” defined as a derived term of the prefix “‖semper-”, listed in the Oxford English Dictionary [2^nd Ed.; 1989]