quaternaladj.

c1616 R. C. Certaine Poems in Times' Whistle (1871) 150 His first Advent yeilds a quaternall section, His birth, his life, his death, his resurrection.

1655 T. Moffett & C. Bennet Healths Improvem. xxviii. 261 The Carthaginians, whose famous quaternal Feast consisted onely of four dishes.

1715 S. Wesley Hist. Old Test. in Verse I. 185/1 Four plumy wings their sides and shoulders grace, And each adorn'd with a quaternal face.

1721 R. Bradley Gen. Treat. Husb. & Gardening i. 165 The Trunk, with its quaternal Covering, is situated in its full Length in the midst of the six Legs, from the Head almost to the extream Parts of the Body.

a1831 J. Stoddart Gram. in Encycl. Metrop. (1845) I. 27/2 They cannot have separate forms for the dual, ternal, quaternal numbers, and so on, ad infinitum.

1872 Jrnl. Anthropol. Inst. 1 xc It is a question whether our own language does not show evidence of the quaternal numeration of two and four, which are closely related as duo and quatuor, and in the same conditions as some Australian numerals.

1974 Jrnl. Amer. Acad. Relig. 42 216 It is in fact the commitment to anamnesis as the way of rebuilding a world for the imagination that establishes the quaternal character of the poems that Eliot brought together in 1943 under the title Four Quartets.

1999 R. Lessem & S. Palsule From Managem. Educ. to Civic Reconstruction vii. 133 The four turnings..together comprise a quaternal social cycle of growth, maturation, entropy and death (or rebirth).

1813 J. C. Hobhouse Journey xxxiii. 581 Prizes distributed at each quaternal celebration of the Olympian games.

2005 Daily Tel. 10 May 18/1 Even Damaged Tony (in his weird new persona as ‘I/We/The Government’) is suddenly promising to listen to me (in my quaternal cameo role as responsible voter).