Definition of "appetency" [ap•pe•ten•cy]

• Appetence. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "It is that sense of life-preserving and life-enhancing appetency which is the conscious accompaniment of struggle."
• "I must further observe that to say the palæotherium has graduated into equus by "natural selection" is an explanation of the process of the same kind and value as that by which the secretion of bile was attributed to the "appetency" of the liver for the elements of bile."
• ""There is also a further use," says Paley, "to be made of this present example, and that is as it precisely contradicts the opinion, that the parts of animals may have been all formed by what is called appetency,"