Trepidatory

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    That trepidates, or that causes trepidations.

    "Unfortunately, like Guthrie he has never given a formal statement of his principles, and it is therefore up to the reader to ferret out these things for himself — always a trepidatory procedure."

  2. 2
    Of an earthquake, having a vertical, up-and-down motion, as opposed to a horizontal, side-to-side motion.

    "This [earthquake] was felt at Mexico at precisely the same hour, lasting there about one minute and a half, the motion there being undulatory, but at Acapulco trepidatory."

Example

More examples

"Unfortunately, like Guthrie he has never given a formal statement of his principles, and it is therefore up to the reader to ferret out these things for himself — always a trepidatory procedure."

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.