[a. F. énumeration, ad. L. ēnumerātiōn-em, n. of action f. ēnumerāre: see prec.]
1. The action of ascertaining the number of something; esp. the taking a census of population; a census.
1577. trans. Bullinger’s Decades (1592), 629. That holy man did rightly know the enumeration of the sacred Trinitie.
1810. in Risdon’s Surv. Devon, 394. According to the enumeration in 1801, the population amounted to 1600 persons.
1819. Gentl. Mag., 529. He produced an enumeration of the inhabitants of the island.
1848. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., I. 340, note. In 1740, the population of Nottingham was found, by enumeration, to be just 10,000.
2. The action of specifying seriatim, as in list or catalogue.
1551. Gardiner, Of The Presence in Sacrament, 21. To multiply language by enumeracioun of partes.
1581. Lambarde, Eiren., IV. xvi. (1588), 576. I shall not need to make long enumeration of the sortes of executions, which [etc.].
1646. Sir T. Browne, Pseud. Ep., VI. i. 279. The enumeration of Genealogies, and particular accounts of time.
1793. T. Beddoes, Math. Evid., 34. The definition of a complex term consists merely in the enumeration of the simple ideas, for which it stands.
1858. Ld. St. Leonards, Handy Bk. Prop. Law, XVIII. 136. The enumeration of these circumstances is not to restrict the generality of the enactment.
b. concr. A catalogue, list.
1724. Watts, Logic, I. ii. § 2. Though they are not all agreed in this enumeration of elements.
1772. Junius Lett., lxviii. 351. The enumeration includes the several acts cited in this paper.
1830. Sir J. Herschel, Stud. Nat. Phil., 135. We should possess an enumeration … of her materials and combinations.
1875. Jowett, Plato (ed. 2), I. 184. And yet in this enumeration the greatest good of all is omitted.
3. Rhet. transl. L. enumeratio: A recapitulation, in the peroration, of the heads of an argument.
1862. in Maunder, Sci. & Lit. Treas.; and in mod. Dicts.
