allect

English

Etymology

From Latin allectare, frequentative of allicere, allectum.

Verb

allect (third-person singular simple present allects, present participle allecting, simple past and past participle allected)

1. (obsolete) To allure; to entice; to sway.
   • 1524, Thomas Wolsey, Letter to Richard Pace:

     […] for conducing wherof theye cannot devyse a better way then to allect the Kinges Grace, with faier promyses, to discend on this syde, to thentent their enterprise should be the more easye and feysable on that party;· and thus to passe, or sen an armye for this or sch like effect, were neyther wisdome profit honnor ne good counsaill.

   • 1528, Sir Thomas More, A Dialog Concerning Heresies:

     But as I said before, if the heretics had never begun with violence, though they had used all the ways they could to allect the people by preaching, though they had therewith done as Luther doth now, and as Mahomet did before, bring up opinions pleasant to the people, giving them liberty to lewdness, yet if they had set violence aside, good Christian people had peradventure yet unto this day used less violence toward them than they do now.

2. (obsolete) To attract; to draw to oneself.
   • 1550, Edward Halle, (Please provide the book title or journal name), page 176:

     Other were sent also to allect and entice lyz Robert Clyfford , and William Batly to retorne into Englande, promslinge to theim franke and free pardone of all offences, and commes promitted promcions and rewardes, for obeynge to the kynges request.

   • 1650, Jean Baptiste van Helmont, Walter Charleton, A Ternary of Paradoxes, page 77:

     The phansy of Amber delights to allect strawes, chaffe , and other festucous bodies, by an attraction , we confesse , obscure and weake enough, yet sufficiently manifest and strong to attest an Electricity, or attractive signature; for married to the mumie of our bodies, it appears superiour to the hmane Magnet, draws counter to it, and by the interest entitleth is selfe to the dignity of a Zenexton or preservatory Amulet against contagion.

   • 2017, Helen Thompson, Fictional Matter: Empiricism, Corpuscles, and the Novel, pages Fictional Matter: Empiricism, Corpuscles, and the Novel:

     As Walter Pagel explains of Helmont's anti-dualist metaphysics, the capacity of the sapphire “Magnetically to allect . . . pestilential virulency” is both spiritual and material, the “product and expression of that sense and sympathy which dwell in each object of the created world."

   • 1654, Walter Charleton, Physiologia Epicuro-Gassendo-Charltoniana:, page 283:

     Whether the Entrals of our Common Mother, and Nurse, the Earth, be, as Gilbert would persuade us, on Great Loadstone substantially is not more impossible to prove, than impertinent to our praesent scope: it being sufficient to the verisimility of our assigned Cause of the perpendicular motion of Terrene Bodies, to conceive the Globe of the Earth to be a Loadstone only Analogically, i.e. that as the Loadstone doth perpetually emit certain invisible streams of exile particles , or Rays of subtle bodies , whereby to allect magnetical bodies to an union with it self ; fo likewise doth the Earth uncessantly emit certain invisible streams, or Rays of subtile boeies, wherewith to attract all its distracted and divorced Parts back again to an Union with it self, and there closely to detain them.

Anagrams

• callet, lectal