v. Also 7 Sc. elid. [ad. L. ēlīd-ĕre to crush out, f. ē out + lædĕre to dash.]
† 1. trans. To destroy, annihilate (the force of evidence). Obs.
1593. Hooker, Eccl. Pol., IV. iv. The force and strength of their arguments is elided.
1637. Gillespie, Eng.-Pop. Cerem., III. vii. 117. Which doth elude and elide all that which they alleadge.
1688. Ess. Magistracy, in Harl. Misc., I. 9. They transfer a necessity of eliding them by clearer evidences.
b. Law, esp. Sc. To annul, do away with, quash, rebut. [So elidere in Roman Law.]
1597. Acts Jas. VI. (1816), 126. They wald haue elidit and stayit the samyn to haue bene put to ony probatioun.
1609. Skene, Reg. Maj., 115. He may … take away, elid, and exclude his [the persewer’s] action, clame, and petition.
1754. Erskine, Princ. Sc. Law (1809), 109. The concurring testimony of the husband and wife … is sufficient to elide this legal presumption.
1828. Scott, Hrt. Midl., xii. Whilk uncertainty is sufficient to elide the conclusions of the libel.
1880. Muirhead, Gaius, IV. § 124. He may … elide the exception.
2. To strike out, suppress, pass over in silence.
1847. Grote, Greece, II. xxx. IV. 153. Many of them made the still greater historical mistake of eliding these last four years altogether.
1851. Sir F. Palgrave, Norm. & Eng., I. 750. Gibbon and Sismondi have elided these monarchs, whose reigns constitute a most stirring era.
1870. Bowen, Logic (ed. 2), 133. The predesignations of quantity … belonging to the Predicate, are usually elided in expression.
3. Gram. To omit (a vowel, or syllable) in pronunciation. Hence Elided ppl. a.
1796. Brit. Crit., VIII. 330 (T.). The care with which the ancients in apostrophized words connected the consonant belonging to the elided syllable with that immediately following.
1851. Sir F. Palgrave, Norm. & Eng., I. 47. Some sounds elided, others exaggerated.
1867. A. J. Ellis, E. E. Pronunc., I. iv. 342. It must remain an undecided question whether Chaucer would or would not have elided the vowel.
