convulsionary

American  

[kuhn-vuhl-shuh-ner-ee] / kənˈvʌl ʃəˌnɛr i /

adjective

1. of or affected with convulsion.

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noun

• convulsionaries
  plural

1. a person who has convulsions, especially as a result of religious experience.

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• convulsionaries
  plural

Etymology

Origin of convulsionary

First recorded in 1735–45; convulsion + -ary

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

convulsionary convulsionaries

Formerly rude and convulsionary forces were actively at work, to compel chaos into anarchy and anarchy into order.

From In the Oregon Country Out-Doors in Oregon, Washington, and California Together with some Legendary Lore, and Glimpses of the Modern West in the Making by George Palmer Putnam

Madame de Stael has something of it; St. Pierre; and down onwards to the present astonishing convulsionary "Literature of Desperation," it is everywhere abundant.

From On Heroes and Hero Worship and the Heroic in History by Thomas Carlyle

As that youth was an useless, false, convulsionary, and hysterical patient, no one was likely to want to keep him, if he could do better.

From Historical Mysteries by Andrew Lang

The joy and sorrow of Stevenson was to find a society "in much the same convulsionary and transitional state" as the Highlands and Islands after 1745.

From The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 1 (of 25) by Andrew Lang

He was a convulsionary, and his head would be found wedged into tight places whence it could hardly be extracted. 

From Cock Lane and Common-Sense by Andrew Lang

Mocked by life, mankind becomes "a race of convulsionaries at the center of a cosmic farce."

From Time Magazine Archive

The wholesome sunlight burst into the room, and checked, as if by magic, the unseemly mumming of these deluded convulsionaries.

From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 by Various

I have seen the whirling and howling dervishes at Constantinople, whose strange and frightful performances can be compared only to those of the medieval convulsionaries.

From Travels in the Steppes of the Caspian Sea, the Crimea, the Caucasus, &c. by Xavier Hommaire de Hell

These arts become lucrative and are backed by the cleverest men, and by the apparent evidence of prophecies by convulsionaries.

From The Making of Religion by Andrew Lang

The convulsionaries of our own days seem to have revived them; posterity will be surprised at them, as we laugh at them now.

From The Phantom World or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. by Henry Christmas