permute, v.
(pəˈmjuːt)
[ad. L. permūtāre to change thoroughly, interchange, exchange (f. per- 2 + mūtāre to change), or a. F. permuter (14th c. in Oresme) = OF. permuer: see permue.]
† 1. a. trans. To change one for another; to exchange, interchange. Obs.
| 1377 Langl. P. Pl. B. xiii. 110, I wolde permute my penaunce with ȝowre for I am in poynte to dowel! c 1450 St. Cuthbert (Surtees) 6511 Þat Eata and Cuthbert Permote þair bischopryks same, Cuthbert to Eland, he to Hexham. 1555 in Hakluyt Voy. (1599) I. 259 To buy, sel, trucke, change and permute al and euery kind..of wares. 1622 Malynes Anc. Law-Merch. 91 A certaine equalitie in the value of things permuted. 1657 Reeve God's Plea 165 Merchandise..by permuting for Native commodities, it gaineth the varieties of all Countries. |
b. absol. To exchange benefices. Obs.
| 1393 Langl. P. Pl. C. iii. 185 Notories on persons þat permuten ofte. 1540 Act 32 Hen. VIII, c. 10 Euerye of the sayd benefyces..should be..vtterly voyde, as if the said offender had resygned and permuted. 1706 in Phillips. |
2. a. To change thoroughly; to change, alter, transmute. Now rare or Obs.
| c 1440 Promp. Parv. 394/2 Permutyn, or holy chawngynn, permuto. 1623 Cockeram, Permute, to change. 1683 J. Gadbury in Wharton's Wks. Pref. 7 Reduction to the very lowest Ebb of Fortune cannot permute a truly well grounded and inbred Loyalty. 1686 W. Aglionby Painting Illustr. 206 Giving leave to a Lady, to permute a Vow she had made. 1846 Proc. Philos. Soc. III. 1 In certain cases a letter may have been permuted, that is, changed to some kindred letter. |
b. Logic. To submit to the process of permutation or obversion.
| 1906 H. W. B. Joseph Introd. Logic 215 The process of permuting and then converting is called Conversion by Negation. |
3. Math. and Linguistics. To subject to permutation; to alter the order of; to re-arrange in a different order. (Cf. permutation 3 b.)
| 1878 Cayley in Encycl. Brit. VIII. 498/1 When the columns are permuted in any manner, or when the lines are permuted in any manner, the determinant retains its original value. 1887 Longm. Mag. Oct. 587 He will hold to the letters and permute their order to suit his own convenience. 1967 D. G. Hays Introd. Computational Linguistics 153 We may be required to permute those elements. 1968 Language XLIV. 31 To account for the fairly flexible ordering of major constituents in a German sentence.., we must have a number of optional rules that permute the subject, object, and adverbials. 1975 N. Chomsky Logical Struct. Linguistic Theory x. 422 In actually formulating ϕ5p as a grammatical transformation we must be careful to indicate that the element K..and the following verb are not permuted when K belongs to the preceding noun phrase. |
Hence perˈmuter, one who permutes.
| 1552 Huloet, Permuter, permutator. 1755 Johnson, Permuter, an exchanger, he who permutes. 1818 in Todd [citing Huloet]. Hence in mod. Dicts. |