inhibitoryadj.

1490 W. Caxton tr. Eneydos xxii. 77 Her feble legacion, the whiche he wold not graunt, by cause that they dyuyne commaundementis inhibytores..were contrarie to the same.

1611 J. Speed Hist. Great Brit. ix. x. 548/2 The Scots hauing made their way in the Court of Rome, procured inhibitory letters from the Pope.

1642 E. Dering Coll. Speeches on Relig. 61 Let therefore this inhibitory Statute against Bishops holding the secular jurisdiction of temporall Lordships stand..irrepealeable.

?1701 Bp. G. Hooper Narr. Lower House Convocation Vindicated 37 This Original Right of the Archbishop, Inhibitory of our Liberty..is the very Point in Question.

1823 J. Lingard Hist. Eng. VI. 231 That Clement.. would soon be compelled to issue an inhibitory breve, forbidding all archbishops or bishops, courts or tribunals, to give judgment in the matrimonial cause of Henry against Catharine.

1856 J. A. Froude Hist. Eng. (1858) I. v. 417 An inhibitory mandate was a natural consequence of the conference at Calais.

1870 H. Spencer Princ. Psychol. (ed. 2) I. i. iii. 64 A system of nerves which diminish action—inhibitory nerves as they are called.

1879 W. James Coll. Ess. & Rev. (1920) 129 Positivism takes a middle ground, and with a certain consciousness of the beyond, abruptly refuses by an inhibitory action of the will to think any further.

1882 Med. Temp. Jrnl. 97 The hypothesis that alcohol narcotises the inhibitory nerve of the heart.

1883 T. L. Brunton in Nature 1 Mar. 420 Several authors have pointed out the analogy between inhibitory phenomena in the animal body and the effects of interference of waves of light or sound.

1901 B. Hollander Revival of Phrenol. i. 36 The frontal lobe, as the seat of the reasoning faculty, is an inhibitory apparatus against the lower and more instinctive natural impulses.

1902 Jrnl. Amer. Chem. Soc. 24 306 The inhibitory actions in question are quite closely confined to reactions in which free oxygen is involved.

1923 Jrnl. Physical Chem. 27 325 The inhibitory power of water in the esterification of acids in alcoholic solutions..represents a complex case of the Titoff type of inhibition.

1944 G. B. Shaw Everybody's Polit. What's What? xxiii. 205 Some [sc. conditioned reflexes] are too cruel for civilized people to tolerate, and from being what Pavlov calls excitatory have become inhibitory.

1959 Metabolism 8 101 Calcium gluconate exerted a significant inhibitory effect on insulin degradation.