a. [f. L. cadūcus falling, fleeting, etc. (f. cadĕre to fall) + -OUS.]
1. Zool. and Bot. Applied to organs or parts that fall off naturally when they have served their purpose; fugacious, deciduous.
1808. Roxburgh, E. Ind. Butter Tree, in Asiat. Researches, VIII. 500. Stipules … minute and caducous.
1835. Lindley, Introd. Bot. (1848), II. 206. Fugacious, or caducous [leaves].
1859. Todd, Cycl. Anat. & Phys., V. 659/1. The placenta and other structures … become caducous.
2. Fleeting, transitory; = CADUKE 2.
1863. J. C. Morison, St. Bernard, II. iii. 229. Monasticism … was temporary, caducous, and charged with germs of evil.
3. Roman Law. Applied to testamentary gifts which for some reason lapsed from the donee.
1880. Muirhead, Gaius, II. § 206. 146. The lapsed share becomes caducous, and falls to those persons named in the testament who happen to have children. Ibid. (1880), Ulpian, xvii. § 1. A testamentary gift which … he to whom it was left has failed to take, although so left that according to the rules of the ius ciuile he might have taken it, is called caducous.
† 4. Subject to the ‘falling sickness,’ epileptic.
1684. trans. Bonet’s Merc. Compit., V. 144. Treat the caducous but roughly, and disturb the manner of the Paroxysm.
