a. Obs. [f. QUIDDIT-Y + -ATIVE. See also QUIDDATIVE.]
1. Pertaining to the quiddity or essence of a thing.
1650. Charleton, Paradoxes, 9. The quidditative and peculiarly expresse causes of all those admirable effects of the Loadstone.
1656. [? J. Sergeant], trans. T. White’s Peripat. Inst., 220. The quidditative notion of an Element.
2. Full of equivocations, quirky.
1611. Cotgr., Quidditatif, quidditatiue, doubtfull, obscure, full of quirkes, fraught with quiddities.
1637. Gillespie, Eng.-Pop. Cerem., I. ix. 31. A weak and easily penetrable hedge of some quidditative Cautions.
Hence † Quidditatively adv.
c. 1600. Timon, IV. iii. (1842), 66. The moone may bee taken … either specificatiuely, or quidditatiuely, or superficially, or catapodially.
