patefaction

English

Etymology

From Latin patefactio, from patefacere (“to open”), from patere (“to lie open”) + facere (“to make”).

Noun

patefaction (plural patefactions)

1. The act of opening, disclosing, or manifesting; open declaration.
   • 1651–1653, Jer[emy] Taylor, ΕΝΙΑΥΤΟΣ [Eniautos]. A Course of Sermons for All the Sundays of the Year. […], 2nd edition, London: […] Richard Royston […], published 1655, →OCLC:

     Spirit of Manifestation or patefaction was like the gem of a wine is or the bud of a rase

   • 1896, Benjamin B. Warfield, “The Right of Systematic Theology”, in The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, page 422:

     All revelation is reduced to the patefaction of God in the series of His great redemptive acts, to the exclusion—entire or partial—of revelation by word, which is sometimes represented, indeed, as in the nature of the case impossible.

Related terms

• patefy

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 The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.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 “patefaction”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)