DEFINITION • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Definition

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/dˌɛfənˈɪʃən/ Listen

noun

Definition n.

1.

The act of defining; determination of the limits; as, a telescope accurate in definition.

2.

Act of ascertaining and explaining the signification; a description of a thing by its properties; an explanation of the meaning of a word or term; as, the definition of "circle;" the definition of "wit;" an exact definition; a loose definition. "Definition being nothing but making another understand by words what the term defined stands for."

3.

Description; sort. (R.) "A new creature of another definition."

4.

(Logic) An exact enunciation of the constituents which make up the logical essence.

5.

(Opt.) Distinctness or clearness, as of an image formed by an optical instrument; precision in detail.

Synonyms: Definition, Explanation, Description. A definition is designed to settle a thing in its compass and extent; an explanation is intended to remove some obscurity or misunderstanding, and is therefore more extended and minute; a description enters into striking particulars with a view to interest or impress by graphic effect. It is not therefore true, though often said, that description is only an extended definition. "Logicians distinguish definitions into essential and accidental. An essential definition states what are regarded as the constituent parts of the essence of that which is to be defined; and an accidental definition lays down what are regarded as circumstances belonging to it, viz., properties or accidents, such as causes, effects, etc."

See images of 'Definition'

Etymology of 'Definition'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar

"Definition" Quotes from Famous Books

... claimed by as good a tenure as any other sort of property. In this doctrine no doubt the Chancellor was perfectly right; and only wrong in supposing that any denial of that doctrine is implied by the Political Economists in calling Tithes a Tax; which, on the true definition of a Tax (as I shall show hereafter), they certainly are.] inclusively, the twenty- second, twenty-third, and twenty-ninth; and these may be entirely omitted by the student, and ought at any rate to be omitted on his first examination of the work. For, though Mr. Ricardo has ...

— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... devil!" I said to my friend, after satisfactory definition of the Pine Rat; "what fiend may ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... all it could, without a grain of waste—his assimilations being neither loose nor literal, and he came back to England as promiscuously qualified, as variously quickened, as his best friends could wish for fine production and fine illustration in some order still awaiting sharp definition. Never certainly had the free poetic sense in him more rejoiced in an ...

— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke

... a new definition for the German equivalent of the English word "impregnable" was furnished by men who went up to battle swearfully or prayerfully, as the case might be, a-swearing and a-praying as they went in more tongues than were babbled at Babel Tower; in other words, on the day when the never-to-be-broken ...

— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... to satisfy the most Gargantuan hunger, and we feel sure that our volumes will never be crowded off the shelf which has once made room for them. If we have, now and then, a little transcended the strict definition of the class of fiction which our title would promise, we shall nevertheless not anticipate any serious quarrel with our readers; if there be room to question the right of any given story to appear in this company, there will be all the more reason for accepting it on its own merits; ...

— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com