Emily Dickinson Lexicon

U-SURP-A'TION, n. [supra.]

The act of seizing or occupying and enjoying the property of another, without right; as, the usurpation of a throne; the usurpation of the supreme power. Usurpation, in a peculiar sense, denotes the absolute ouster and dispossession of the patron of a church, by presenting a clerk to a vacant benefice, who is thereupon admitted and instituted. Cyc.