a. (sb.) Obs. [a. OF. subalternal (15th c.) or its source med.L. *subalternālis, f. subalternus SUBALTERN: see -AL.]
1. Subordinate, inferior. Const. to.
c. 1400. Pilgr. Sowle (Caxton), I. xxx. (1859), 33. Alle other lawes ordeyned of man be not subalternal for to serue the lawe of oure lord.
1588. Fraunce, Lawiers Logike, I. ii. 10 b. It were against … all arte to jumpe abruptly from the highest and most generall to the lowest and most speciall, without passing by the subalternal.
1607. Topsell, Four-f. Beasts, 714. Sundry Beastes haue not onely their diuisions, but subdeuisions, into subalternal kinds.
1625. Darcie, Annales, a 4. Those subalternal Deities who, for putting themselues in Iupiters bedde, were … metamorphosed into strange shapes.
1628. R. Heath, Discov. Jesuit’s Coll. (Camden), 29. They acknowledg subjection to a foren power, and have setled a government amongst themselves subalternal therunto.
b. sb. A subordinate.
1673. Marvell, Reh. Transp., II. 227. I am not at all doubtful but that he [the Supreme Magistrate] may punish any such transgression in his Subalternals and Substitutes.
2. Succeeding in turn, alternating.
1588. J. Harvey, Disc. Probl., 23. There should euery 7000 yeere, insue a certaine subalternall time of peaceable calmenes, and transitory rest.
1657. Penit. Conf., v. 72 [74]. Where the disease is sin, the remedy confession and prayer; the Physicians and Patients subalternal.
