Delation meaning

Henceforth the various corps lost more and more their territorial character, one nationality was set to watch and control the other, and espionage and delation prevailed.

In Mesopotamia and Yemen disturbance was endemic; nearer home, a semblance of loyalty was maintained in the army and among the Mussulman population by a system of delation and espionage, and by wholesale arrests; while, obsessed by terror of assassination, the sultan withdrew himself into fortified seclusion in the palace of Yildiz.

But the worst vices of the Inquisition were the widespread system of delation it encouraged by paying informers out of the property of the condemned, and its action as a trading and landholding association.