[ad. F. caducité, as if:—L. *cadūcitātem, f. cadūcus: see next.]
1. Tendency to fall; quality of being perishable or fleeting; transitoriness, frailty.
1793. W. Roberts, Looker-on, No. 49 (1794), II. 231. One of those evenings of autumn when the chilling damps of the air, and the caducity of nature, deepen the gloom of a melancholy mind.
1841. L. Hunt, Seer, II. (1864), 60. The stages of human existence, the caducity of which the writer applies to the world at large.
1879. M. Pattison, Milton, 199. The ordinary caducity of language, in virtue of which every effusion of the human spirit is lodged in a body of death.
2. esp. The infirmity of old age, senility.
1769. Chesterf., Lett., 426, IV. 272. This melancholick proof of my caducity.
1776–88. Gibbon, Decl. & F., lxi. (R.). Count Henry assumed the regency of the empire, at once in a state of childhood and caducity.
1815. W. Taylor, in Robberds, Mem., II. 460. My father was attacked with symptoms of caducity.
1841. D’Israeli, Amen. Lit. (1867), 345. The youth, the middle-age, and the caducity of the eminent personage.
3. Roman Law. Lapse of a testamentary gift.
1875. Poste, Gaius, II. (ed. 2), 264. The leges caducariæ, which fixed the conditions of caducity.
1880. Muirhead, Gaius, 464. If the party failing to take was sole heir, the caducity caused intestacy.
4. Zool. and Bot. Quality of being caducous.
1881. J. S. Gardner, in Nature, XXIV. 75. The spores become detached before germination … this caducity always characterises the microspore.
