signify the buttings or boundings of land towards any point. Limits were anciently distinguished by artificial hillocks, which were called buttentones; and hence butting. In a description of the site of land, the sides on the breadth are more properly adjacentes, and those terminating the length are abbutantes; which, in old surveys, were sometimes expressed by capitares, to head, whence abbutals are now called head-lands.

ABECEDARY, or ABECEDARIAN, an epithet given to compositions, the parts of which are disposed in the order of the letters of the alphabet: thus we say, Abecedarian psalms, lamentations, hymns, &c.