tergant

English

A wasp tergant.

Alternative forms

• tergiant

Adjective

tergant (not comparable)

1. Alternative form of tergiant

   Synonyms: recursant, en arrière

   an eagle tergant

2. (literary) Showing its back, for example because it is departing (or fleeing).
   • 1906, Hartley Burr Alexander, “V. The Imagination”, in Poetry and the Individual: An Analysis of the Imaginative Life in Relation to the Creative Spirit in Man and Nature, New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, pages 115–116:

     Introspective impartiality, therefore, seldom if ever co-exists with the psychical activities which are the object of introspective interest. Such activities always have to be observed retrospectively, either in memory or in half vision of their fleeing forms; our best are but scant glimpses of tergant fugitives.

   • 1924 February, James Gould Cozzens, Confusion, Boston: B. J. Brimmer Company, page 288:

     The impression of interludes which seemed obscurely enlightening haunted her, but a glance at the winter past and spring already tergant did nothing to confirm it.

References

• “tergant”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• John A. Simpson and Edmund S. C. Weiner, editors (1989), “tergant, tergiant, a.”, in The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, →ISBN.

Anagrams

• Garnett, garnett

Latin

Verb

tergant

1. third-person plural present active subjunctive of tergō