a. Also 9 -icious. [f. L. trālātīci-us usual, customary, common, metaphorical, tropical (f. trālāt-, ppl. stein of transferre and -ITIOUS1).]
1. Characterized by transference; esp. of words or phrases, metaphorical, figurative.
1645. Tombes, Anthropol., 5. I have planted, Apollo watered; but God gave the increase. Now these things cannot be conceived as tralatitious, for it is said, they were Ministers by whom they believed.
1650. Fuller, Pisgah, IV. vii. 138. Too often guilty of what may be termed tralatitious idolatry, when any thing … is loved, or honoured above, or even with God himself.
1688. R. Holme, Armoury, III. 253/2. Tralatitious, or Artificiall sentences,… are Borrowed words,… Termed also a Metaphor, Trope, Parable, or Simile.
1748. Hartley, Observ. Man, II. i. 63. A secondary and tralatitious Association.
1880. R. C. Christie, E. Dolet, 237. I give … both its primary and its second or tralatitious meaning.
† 2. Passed from hand to hand; common, ordinary, vulgar. Obs.
1653. Waterhouse, Apol. Learning, 4. By with-drawing those favours … which invigor’d Learning, and nourished men of deserts and worth,… and by appreciating things and persons more tralatitious and vulgar.
1656. Blount, Glossogr., Tralatitious, transferred or transposed: of the common sort, ordinary, vulgar.
3. Handed down from generation to generation; traditional; also, repeated by one from another, as a statement.
1795. Wythe, Decis. Virginia, 6. Where an estate of inheritance is acquired not by tralatitious act, as by estoppel, dissesin [etc.].
1900. Margoliouth, in Expositor, Aug., 136. The subjects … and expressions are ‘tralaticious,’ borrowed by one generation from another, in so long a series that it is now impossible to name or locate their originator.
1912. Sir W. Ramsay, in Contemp. Rev., March, 339. Self-satisfied contentment with tralaticious statements, borrowed from good books or teachers … and repeated in book after book.
Hence Tralatitiously adv., metaphorically.
1657. Gaule, Sap. Justif., 91. Adams sin was not tropically and tralatitiously, but even litterally and properly, ours.
1669. Holder, Elem. Speech, 8. Language … properly … is that of the Tongue…. Written Language is tralatitiously so called, because it is made to represent to the Eye the same Letters and Words, which are pronounced.
