MAJOR, in Logic, is understood of the first proposition
Major of a regular syllogism. It is called major because it has a more extensive sense than the minor proposition, as containing the principal term. See LOGIC.
Major and Minor, in MUSIC, are applied to concords which differ from each other by a semi-tone. See MUSIC.
Major tone is the difference between the fifth and fourth, and major semi-tone is the difference between the major fourth and the third. The major tone surpasses the minor by a comma.
Major-Domo, an Italian term frequently used to signify a steward or master of the household. The title of major-domo was formerly given in the courts of princes to three different kinds of officers; first, to him who took care of what related to the prince's table; secondly, to the steward of the household; and, thirdly, to the chief minister, or person to whom the prince deputed the administration of his affairs, foreign and domestic.
Major or MAIR, John, a scholastic divine and historian, was born at Haddington, in the province of East Lothian, in Scotland. It appears, from some passages in his writings, that he resided both at Oxford and Cambridge. He went to Paris in 1493, and studied in the college of St Barbe under the celebrated Boudac, after which he removed to that of Montacute, where he began to study divinity under Standonk. In the year 1498, he was entered of the college of Navarre. In 1505, he was created doctor in divinity; in 1519, he returned to Scotland, and taught theology during several years in the university of St Andrews. But, becoming disgusted with the quarrels of his countrymen, he went back to Paris, and resumed his lectures in the college of Montacute, where he had several pupils who afterwards became men of great eminence. About the year 1530, he once more returned to Scotland, and was chosen professor of theology at St Andrews, of which he afterwards became provost, and died there in 1547, aged seventy-eight. His logical treatises form one immense folio, and his commentaries on Aristotle's physics another; whilst his theological works amount to several volumes of the same size. These masses of crude and useless disquisition were the admiration of his contemporaries. A work, less prized in his own age, namely, his book De Gestis Scotorum, first published at Paris by Badius Ascensius, in the year 1521, has alone made him known to posterity. He rejects in it some of the fictions of former historians, and his merit would have been greater if he had rejected more of them. He intermingles the history of England with that of Scotland, and has incurred the censure of some partial writers, for giving an authority to the authors of the former nation, which he refuses to those of his own. Bede, Caxton, and Froissart, were exceedingly useful to him. The style in which he wrote does not deserve commendation. Bishop Spottiswood calls it "Sorbonnic" and "barbarous."