arch. [ad. L. construct-us, pa. pple. of construĕre: see next.]
1. pa. pple. Constructed.
1432–50. trans. Higden (Rolls), I. 63. Compacte and constructe throe the heete of the sonne.
1578. Banister, Hist. Man, I. 19. In Children the same [Occiput] is construct of many bones.
1773. J. Ross, Fratricide (MS.), IV. 333. For so immortal bodies are construct.
1867. G. Macdonald, Sonnets, Concerning Jesus, xi. To the few construct of harmonies.
2. adj. in Construct state, state construct, in grammar of Hebrew and other Semitic languages: the form of the substantive used when standing before another having an attributive (or genitive) relation to it, which may be translated by the nominative (or other case) followed by of, as ba·yith house, bēyth-ĕlōhī·m house of God.
It is distinctive of the Semitic languages that in expressing such a notion as house of God, they do not like the Aryan languages, put God in the genitive, but, retaining this unchanged, put house in the ‘state construct.’ In this form the substantive becomes accentually combined with that which follows, losing its independent stress, and undergoing various consequent changes, as loss or lightening of vowels, of inflexional consonants, etc.
[1737. A. Schultens, Institutiones, 184. Regimen autem, sive statum constructum, dicunt [grammatici] copulationem illam.]
1821. Moses Stuart, Heb. Gram. (1831), 124. The construct state.
1830. W. T. Philipps, Elem. Heb. Gr., 81. In regimen or the constructed state.
1836. trans. Hengstenberg’s Christol., I. 353. The Stat. Constr. is often used where the connexion is intimate, though not made by a genitive, especially before prepositions.
1874. trans. Lange’s Comm. Zech., 57. The singular occurrence of [such words] after a noun in the construct.
