abstersion

See also: abstersión

English

Either from (Old French, or from Medieval Latin abstertion), from Latin abstersus, past participle of abstergēo.

abstersion (countable and uncountable, plural abstersions)

(archaic) Act of wiping clean; a cleansing; a purging. [First attested around 1350 to 1470.][1]
- 1814, Sir Walter Scott, Waverley; or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since,
  Waverley ... was offered the patriarchal refreshment of a bath for the feet ... He was not, indeed, so luxuriously attended upon this occasion as the heroic travellers in the Odyssey; the task of ablution and abstersion being performed, not by a beautiful damsel, trained To chafe the limb, and pour the fragrant oil, but by a smoke-dried skinny old Highland woman, who did not seem to think herself much honoured by the duty imposed upon her...

the act of cleaning

“abstersion” in Lesley Brown, editor, The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 5th edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 9.

abstersion (plural abstersions)