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Postulate   /pˈɑstʃəlˌeɪt/  /pˈɑstʃələt/   Listen
verb
Postulate  v. t.  (past & past part. postulated; pres. part. postulating)  
1.
To beg, or assume without proof; as, to postulate conclusions.
2.
To take without express consent; to assume. "The Byzantine emperors appear to have... postulated a sort of paramount supremacy over this nation."
3.
To invite earnestly; to solicit. (Obs.)


noun
Postulate  n.  
1.
Something demanded or asserted; especially, a position or supposition assumed without proof, or one which is considered as self-evident; a truth to which assent may be demanded or challenged, without argument or evidence.
2.
(Geom.) The enunciation of a self-evident problem, in distinction from an axiom, which is the enunciation of a self-evident theorem. "The distinction between a postulate and an axiom lies in this, that the latter is admitted to be self-evident, while the former may be agreed upon between two reasoners, and admitted by both, but not as proposition which it would be impossible to deny."


adjective
Postulate  adj.  Postulated. (Obs.)





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Postulate" Quotes from Famous Books



... the Security Mutual of Binghamton, N. Y., does not support such a postulate. During a twelve years' experience the mortality among the abstainers was one-third that of the tabular expectation, and their occupations were ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... The postulate of the One Wise man is repeated in KRATYLUS, on the unpromising subject of Language or ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... belongs to the same class, though at first sight it seems to postulate the preexistence of a fatal event and a vision of the future corresponding exactly with a vision of the past. A traveler in South America is descending a river in a canoe; the party are just about to run close ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... the clearest presentment ever offered in the matter of predestined circumstance—predestined from the instant when that primal atom felt the vital thrill. Mark Twain's early life, however imperfectly recorded, exemplifies this postulate. If through the years still ahead of us the course of destiny seems less clearly defined, it is only because thronging events make the threads less easy to trace. The web becomes richer, the pattern more intricate and confusing, but the line of ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... suppose, among the most difficult themes to treat convincingly in fiction. To name but one handicap, the author has in such cases to postulate at least some degree of acquaintance on the part of the reader with his celebrated subject. "Everyone is now familiar," he will observe, "with the sensational triumph achieved by the work of X——;" whereat the reader, uneasily conscious of never having heard of him, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various


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