plenal

English

Etymology

From Latin plenus (“full”). Compare plenary.

Adjective

plenal (comparative more plenal, superlative most plenal)

1. (obsolete) full; complete
   • 1902, Alfred H. Lloyd, “A Study in the Logic of the Early Greek Philosophy”, in The Monist, volume 12, page 407:

     The greatest thing, necessarily including all other things, however plenal within itself, could not but be empty in respect to their fulness.

   • 1913, Arthur Keith, “Problems relating to the Teeth of the Earlier Forms of Prehistoric Man”, in Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, volume 6, page 113:

     If the orang dentition (see fig. 9) be taken as representing a mean or plenal degree of development, then the gorilla's represents a supra-plenal phase, and the chimpanzee's the infra-plenal phase.

2. Pertaining to a hypothetical substance that fills all the voids in the universe.
   • 1991, Nicholas Griffin, Russell's Idealist Apprenticeship, page 223:

     One physical advantage which Russell claims for the plenal theory, though again without full conviction, is a solution to the antinomy of absolute motion:

   • 2001, Julian B. Barbour, The Discovery of Dynamics:

     There is thus a relative motion between the earth and the plenal fluid touching it.

Anagrams

• penall