gravamen
English
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ɡɹəˈveɪmɛn/
- Rhymes: -eɪmən
Noun
gravamen (plural gravamens)
- The grievance complained of; the substantial cause of the action; also, in general, the ground or essence of a complaint.
- 1822, The Annual Register, or a view of the History, Politics, and Literature, of the year 1820, part II, Abstracts of State Trials, account of trial following the Peterloo Massacre, pages 902–903:
- Falsehood, which was in ordinary cases the gravamen of the complaint, was omitted altogether in the information against him.
- 2002, Eric S. Raymond, SF Words and Prototype Worlds:
- The gravamen of this essay is that these signifiers (the jargon of SF) function not merely as a set of isolated signs […]
- 1822, The Annual Register, or a view of the History, Politics, and Literature, of the year 1820, part II, Abstracts of State Trials, account of trial following the Peterloo Massacre, pages 902–903:
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 The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.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 gravamen in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.)
Spanish
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