precipient

English

Etymology

Latin praecipiens, present participle. See precept.

Adjective

precipient (comparative more precipient, superlative most precipient)

Commanding; directing; willing.
- 1810 February, “Metaphysical Essays; containing the Pinciples and fundamental Objects of that Science. By Richard Kirwan”, in The Monthly Repertory of English Literature, volume 9, page 328:
  Identity, as applied to man, denotes strictly the same unchanged and unchangeable precipient unity, notwithstanding any diversity of modes or of relations as to time, place, or other objects, which it may have experienced.
- 1869, Aspects of Humanity, brokenly mirrored in the Ever-Swelling Currents of Human Speech, page 10:
  Whilst the wholly external thing, or fact is, in the language of metaphysics, pure object, and the precipient or acting soul pure subject, the intervening links—that is, the modification of the organ of sense, or of conscious motion, that of the cerebral centres, and also (it is assumed) that of the precipient or acting soul itself—may be contemplated either as objective or subjective phenomena, according as they are viewed from without, analytically and as separate facts, or from within, in their natural sythesis, as necessary parts of a single whole.
- 1920, Alfred North Whitehead, The Concept of Nature: Tarner Lectures, page 107:
  The complete foothold of the mind in nature is represented by the pair of events, namely, the present duration which marks the 'when' of awareness and the percipient event which marks the 'where' of awareness and the 'how' of awareness.
- 2008, Heinrich Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, page 89:
  But it is ineffective in respect of certain people who do not obey the precipient will.
Perceiving or percieved; pertaining to or capable of observation or sensation.
- 1911, Casey Albert Wood, A System of ophthalmic operations, page 1385:
  Total embolism of the left artery; organic disease of the heart; retention of a small island of precipient retina; treatment by deep massage with slight improvement .
- 1987, National Transportation Safety Board Decisions, page 314:
  Against this, however, I have the precipient testimony of trained observers: Trooper Ranger , Officer Albrecht, Sgt. Prock, who observed these individuals .
- 1995, Michael L. Cowdrey, ‎Melinda Drew, Basic Law for the Allied Health Professions, page 242:
  Compensation for a percipient witness in such situations is governed by statute, as with any other nonexpert witness.
- 2006, Vera Velichko, The Best on the East, page 409:
  However, it can be developed if you find a precipient brain, that is, one specially tuned in to inner induction. Many were tested, I among them. Well, so I turned out to be an exceptional precipient.

Noun

precipient (plural precipients)

One who wills or has consciousness.
- 1810 February, “Metaphysical Essays; containing the Principles and fundamental Objects of that Science. By Richard Kirwan”, in The Monthly Repertory of English Literature, volume 9, page 324:
  The mind itself, the self-conscious precipient, the only real existence in the constitution of man, is placed beyond the reach of human observation; an those who resolve the thinking principle into a convolution of organic fibres like the brain, might as well suppose the thinking power of the Almighty spirit to consist only in the organizing system of the visible universe.
- 1880, Frederick W. Frankland, “On the Doctrine of Mind-Stuff”, in Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute, page 214:
  Nor can the elements of the phenomenal world derive any complexity from the interaction of the noumenal elements which they represent with the complex structure of the precipients.
- 1981, R. S. Woolhouse, Leibniz: Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science, page 116:
  Both matter and motion are stated to be 'phenomena of percipients' ^[sic], and to be derived (not by considering abstractly an aspect of a plurality of simple substances, but) from the harmony of precipients with themselves at different times, and with other precipients.
One who perceives, especially one who is particularly sensitive.
- 1830 August, “Memoir of the Rev. Thomas Lloyd”, in The Christian guardian, page 289:
  We parayed around his bed, and I occasionally addressed to him a few appropriate sentences; but the divine precipient within had withdrawn its notices from all sublunary things: God had graciously interposed a veil between him and this life, for his feelings were not excited (as far as we could discern) by the grief and tears of his surrounding relations; nor did the inner man appear to be terrified or disturbed by any fiery temptations from the spiritual adversary, or by any other mysterious and invisible causes.
- 1877, Julius Charles Hare, ‎Edward Hayes Plumptre, The Mission of the Comforter, page 297:
  The difficulties which have often been felt, and which have occasioned interminable controversies, concerning the priority of the outward or the inward act, might be lessened if we were to meditate on the facts presented to us by all the operations of life; hhow in all there is a combination of two coordinate elements; how, for instance, in perception there is a reciprocal action of the object and the precipient, which must be coinstantaneous, admitting of no priority, no exclusive causation, on one side or the other; although even here a like controversy has started up, and one psychological school ascribes all primary causative power to the objects of knowledge, another to the mind that knows.
- 2005, Jeff Dwyer, Ghost Hunter's Guide to the San Francisco Bay Area, page 102:
  One precipient has heard the shouts and screams of a riot and felt the rush of spirits as they flee to the north side of the plaza ,
- 2006, Vera Velichko, The Best on the East, page 409:
  However, it can be developed if you find a precipient brain, that is, one specially tuned in to inner induction. Many were tested, I among them. Well, so I turned out to be an exceptional precipient.
- 2006, W. Whately Smith, A Theory of the Mechanism of Survival, page 108:
  In order to attain absolute prevision the precipient must be able to function consciously in maximally-dimensional space.

Anagrams

percipient