armsbearing en · ADJ
Etymology
From arms + bearing.
Meanings
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(not-comparable) Engaged in bearing arms; armed.
In a war with a single tribe, near a tenth part of the armsbearing population of Massachusetts was killed, and one house in ten laid in ashes.
1837, Speech of Mr Cushing of Massachusetts, on the Proposition to Censure Mr John Quincy Adams, for an Alleged Disrespect to the House of Representatives, page 11:I shall proceed, however, to investigate, as far as possible, the several differences borne by the Nevilles upon the saltire of their first armsbearing ancestor, Robert fitz Maldred.
1866, read by John Gough Nichols, “The armorial windows erected in the reign of Henry VI. by John Viscount Beaumont and Katharine Duchess of Norfolk in Woodhouse Chapel, by the Park of Beaumanor, in Charnwood Forest, Leicestershire. Including an investigation of the differences of the Coat of Neville.”, in Transactions of the Leicestershire Architectural and Archæological Society, volume I, Leicester: Crossley and Clarke, page 326:The net result of both wars was the victory of an armsbearing equestrian gentry with a lifestyle radically different from that of the courtiers.
1979, Carl Steenstrup, Hōjō Shigetoki (1198-1261) and His Role in the History of Political and Ethical Ideas in Japan, Curzon Press, →ISBN, page 7:When it is understood that in a single county in New Jersey, that of Essex, but two per cent. of the armsbearing population liable to military duty is enrolled in the National Guard, the objection, apart from every other consideration, to creating the whole or a considerable majority of any one class or race of citizen armsbearers carries no little weight.
1878 May 1, “The Color Question”, in The National Guardsman: A Journal Devoted to the Interests of the National Guard of the U. S., volume I, number 10, New York, N.Y.: Charles A. Coffin, […], page 169: