MENTAL RESERVATION • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Mental reservation

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/mˈɛntəl rˌɛzərvˈeɪʃən/ Listen

noun

Reservation n.

1.

The act of reserving, or keeping back; concealment, or withholding from disclosure; reserve. "With reservation of an hundred knights." "Make some reservation of your wrongs."

2.

Something withheld, either not expressed or disclosed, or not given up or brought forward.

3.

A tract of the public land reserved for some special use, as for schools, for the use of Indians, etc. (U.S.)

4.

The state of being reserved, or kept in store.

5.

(Law)

(a)

A clause in an instrument by which some new thing is reserved out of the thing granted, and not in esse before.

(b)

A proviso. Note: This term is often used in the same sense with exception, the technical distinction being disregarded.

6.

(Eccl.)

(a)

The portion of the sacramental elements reserved for purposes of devotion and for the communion of the absent and sick.

(b)

A term of canon law, which signifies that the pope reserves to himself appointment to certain benefices.

7.

An agreement to have some space, service or other acommodation, as at a hotel, a restaurant, or on a public transport system, held for one's future use; also, the record or receipt for such an agreement, or the contractual obligation to retain that accommodation; as, a hotel reservation; a reservation on a flight to Dallas; to book a reservation at the Ritz.

Mental reservation, the withholding, or failing to disclose, something that affects a statement, promise, etc., and which, if disclosed, would materially change its import.

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Etymology of 'Mental reservation'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Mental reservation" Quotes from Famous Books

... example of strict probity; that he had repeatedly sworn allegiance to the House of Brunswick; that he had assisted in placing the crown on the head of George I., and that he had abjured James III., "without equivocation or mental reservation, on the true ...

— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... benefiting him, other than by furnishing him a means of amusement in the enforced solitude of his affliction. Mollie did not consider that Hester Le Moyne was a Southern woman, and as such, while she might admire courage and accomplishments in a woman of Northern birth, always did so with a mental reservation in favor of her own class. When, however, one came from the North to teach the negroes, in order that they might overpower and rule the whites, which she devoutly believed to be the sole purpose of the colored educational movement, no matter under what specious guise of charity it might ...

— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... is too good to work," replied Ellen, but she uttered the platitude with a sort of mental reservation. In spite of herself, the attitude of worship in which she had always seen all who belonged to her had spoiled her a little. She did look at herself with a sort of compunction when she realized the fact that she might have to go to work in the shop some time. School-teaching was different, ...

— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... equitable administration as the city had never before experienced. Some exceptionable acts they undoubtedly committed; and when Petrarch extols Azzo as another Cato, it is to be hoped that he did so with some mental reservation. Petrarch had proposed to cross the Alps immediately, and proceed to Avignon; but he was prevailed upon by the solicitations of Azzo to remain some time at Parma. He was consulted by the Correggios on their most important affairs, ...

— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... she says, writes beautiful verses. Somehow or other, all this praise, and more of the same kind, gave me an idea of an intolerably irreproachable person; and I asked Mrs. Nightingale if Lady Byron were warm-hearted. With some hesitation, or mental reservation,—at all events, not quite ...

— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

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