costive

From Middle French costivé, past participle of costiver (“to constipate”), ultimately from Latin cōnstīpātus (“constipated”). Doublet of constipate.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈkɒstɪv/

• Audio (Southern England):

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• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈkɑstɪv/

costive (comparative more costive, superlative most costive)

1. Constipated.
   • 1607 (first performance), [Francis Beaumont], The Knight of the Burning Pestle, London: […] [Nicholas Okes] for Walter Burre, […], published 1613, →OCLC, Act V, signature K3, recto:

     When I was mortall, this my costiue corps / Did lap vp Figs and Raisons in the Strand, / Where sitting I espi'd a louely Dame, / Whose maister wrought with Lingell and with All, / And vnder ground he vampied many a boote.

   • 2004, Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty […], 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN, page 346:

     Melanie, who was used to Wani's costive memos, and even to dressing up the gist of a letter in her own words, stuck out her tongue in concentration as she took down Nick's old-fashioned periods and perplexing semicolons.

2. (informal) Miserly, parsimonious.
   • 2006 July 1, Hugh Conlon, Nine Familiar Fables, Lulu.com, →ISBN, page 73:

     Well, the shoemaker and his wife, Louise, may have been poor, needy, indigent, destitute, impecunious and impoverished — at least before the elves came along — but they had never been parsimonious, costive, miserly, penny-pinching or stinting. They were far from being avaricious, rapacious, mean or greedy. The shoemaker was uxorious about his wife, Louise, but he had never been usurious, even when he had money to lend  […]

   • For quotations using this term, see Citations:costive.

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