Deliverance

4 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Deliverance \De*liv"er*ance\, n. [F. d['e]livrance, fr.
     d['e]livrer.]
     1. The act of delivering or freeing from restraint,
        captivity, peril, and the like; rescue; as, the
        deliverance of a captive.
        [1913 Webster]


  
              He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to
              preach deliverance to the captives.   --Luke iv. 18.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              One death or one deliverance we will share.
                                                    --Dryden.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     2. Act of bringing forth children. [Archaic] --Shak.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     3. Act of speaking; utterance. [Archaic] --Shak.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     Note: In this and in the preceding sense delivery is the word
           more commonly used.
           [1913 Webster]
  
     4. The state of being delivered, or freed from restraint.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              I do desire deliverance from these officers. --Shak.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     5. Anything delivered or communicated; esp., an opinion or
        decision expressed publicly. [Scot.]
        [1913 Webster]
  
     6. (Metaph.) Any fact or truth which is decisively attested
        or intuitively known as a psychological or philosophical
        datum; as, the deliverance of consciousness.
        [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  deliverance
       n : recovery or preservation from loss or danger; "work is the
           deliverance of mankind"; "a surgeon's job is the saving
           of lives" [syn: {rescue}, {delivery}, {saving}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  131 Moby Thesaurus words for "deliverance":
     Emancipation Proclamation, abalienation, accommodation, accordance,
     action, affranchisement, alienation, amortization, amortizement,
     assignation, assignment, award, awarding, bargain and sale, barter,
     bequeathal, bestowal, bestowment, break, breakout, catharsis,
     cession, cleansing, communication, concession, condemnation,
     conferment, conferral, consideration, consignation, consignment,
     contribution, conveyance, conveyancing, decision, decree, deeding,
     delivery, demise, determination, diagnosis, dictum, discharge,
     disenthrallment, disposal, disposition, donation, doom,
     emancipation, emergence, emotional release, endowment, enfeoffment,
     enfranchisement, escape, escapism, evasion, exchange, extrication,
     finding, flight, freeing, furnishment, gay liberation, getaway,
     gifting, giving, grant, granting, impartation, impartment,
     intermission, investiture, issuance, issue, jailbreak, leak,
     leakage, lease and release, liberality, liberation, lifesaving,
     manumission, offer, order, outlet, precedent, presentation,
     presentment, prisonbreak, prognosis, pronouncement, provision,
     purgation, purge, purging, ransom, recovery, redemption, release,
     removal, reprieve, rescue, resolution, respite, retrieval,
     riddance, ruling, sale, salvage, salvation, saving, sentence,
     setting at liberty, setting-free, settlement, settling,
     subscription, supplying, surcease, surrender, suspension, trading,
     transfer, transference, transmission, transmittal, vent, verdict,
     vesting, vouchsafement
  
  

From Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856) [bouvier]:

  DELIVERANCE, Practice. A term used by the clerk in court to every prisoner 
  who is arraigned and pleads not guilty to whom he wishes a good deliverance. 
  In modern practice this is seldom used.