TESTAMENT • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Testament

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/tˈɛstəmənt/ Listen

noun

Testament n.

(Law) A solemn, authentic instrument in writing, by which a person declares his will as to disposal of his estate and effects after his death. Note: This is otherwise called a will, and sometimes a last will and testament. A testament, to be valid, must be made by a person of sound mind; and it must be executed and published in due form of law. A man, in certain cases, may make a valid will by word of mouth only. See Nuncupative will, under Nuncupative.

One of the two distinct revelations of God's purposes toward man; a covenant; also, one of the two general divisions of the canonical books of the sacred Scriptures, in which the covenants are respectively revealed; as, the Old Testament; the New Testament; often limited, in colloquial language, to the latter. "He is the mediator of the new testament... for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament."

Holographic testament, a testament written wholly by the testator himself.

See images of 'Testament'

Etymology of 'Testament'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Testament" Quotes from Famous Books

... to the reign of the individual will, and from appetite to selfishness on the ground of higher motives, and from immediate gratification to prudential considerations. And the crowning change of all is from selfishness to love. And each one of them takes time. Remember that the Old Testament history is the record of how God taught one little people that there is but one God, Jehovah. Think of the struggles, defeats, and captivities which the Israelites had to undergo before they learned this lesson, and even then only ...

— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler

... women of China decided to present a New Testament to the Empress Dowager on her sixtieth birthday which occurred the following year. New type was prepared, the finest foreign paper secured, and the book was made after the best style of the printer's art, with gilt borders, gilt edges, and bound in silver of an embossed bamboo pattern and encased ...

— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland

... pressed by his faithful supporters, the Jesuits, he promulgated it in 1713, and it condemns with great explicitness one hundred and one propositions which are taken from Quesnel's Jansenistic "Reflexions morales sur le Nouveau Testament." The Jesuits held the Jansenists in a horror which the Jansenists reciprocated; the Pope owed almost too heavy a debt of gratitude to the order of Saint Ignatius and was constrained to repay. But the Bull, instead of procuring peace, ...

— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose

... meet death on the field like a man, than face it on Tower Hill, as some of them may," continued Mr. Westbury. "I hope he has made some testament, or provided for thee somehow. This letter says, he recommends unicum filium suum dilectissimum to his lady. I hope he has left you ...

— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... last testament in the folds of the lace, tied the parcel carefully, carefully put it away, and, after the untasted dinner had been removed, I lowered the lamp-flame, and sat, God only knows how lonely! as I had sat twelve months before, in my ...

— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan

More quotes...