costive - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
From Middle French costivé, ultimately from Latin constipatus (“constipated”).
costive
- 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 […], London: Picador, →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.
- (informal) Miserly, parsimonious.