AXIOM • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Axiom

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

/ˈæksiəm/ Listen

noun

Axiom n.

(Logic & Math.) A self-evident and necessary truth, or a proposition whose truth is so evident as first sight that no reasoning or demonstration can make it plainer; a proposition which it is necessary to take for granted; as, "The whole is greater than a part;" "A thing can not, at the same time, be and not be."

An established principle in some art or science, which, though not a necessary truth, is universally received; as, the axioms of political economy.

Synonyms: Axiom, Maxim, Aphorism, Adage. An axiom is a self-evident truth which is taken for granted as the basis of reasoning. A maxim is a guiding principle sanctioned by experience, and relating especially to the practical concerns of life. An aphorism is a short sentence pithily expressing some valuable and general truth or sentiment. An adage is a saying of long-established authority and of universal application.

See images of 'Axiom'

Etymology of 'Axiom'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar

"Axiom" Quotes from Famous Books

... of mind; and if there ever was a school-boy despised and detested by his fellows, William was that youth. "The boy's the father of the man," and those who have known him only in his ripened years, if they apply the truth of this axiom, will have no difficulty in correctly conjecturing what must have been his early youth. Even then his predominant weakness was to almost daily, and by the hour, expatiate upon the merits of his great "grandfather," and to entertain boys, smaller and ...

— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various

... he said, smoothly, "you do not come to me, I trust, to act as your agent in order to induce Miss Gray to take any other view of you than she does. Because if you do," he went on suavely, "I am afraid that I cannot help you very much. There is an axiom in the English language to which I subscribe most thoroughly, and it is that 'all is fair in ...

— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace

... the phrase just used—"to divide the total force," because it is an axiom with some that one must never divide his total force; and the idea of dividing our fleet, by assigning part to the Atlantic and part to the Pacific, has been condemned by many officers, the ...

— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske

... could be no doubt about it. There in material form on the corner of his table was a point-blank, tangible contradiction of the universally accepted axiom that two bodies cannot occupy the same space, and that, come from somewhere or nowhere, there were two plainly material objects through which his daughter's hand, without her even knowing it, had passed as easily as it would have done through ...

— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith

... the familiar axiom,"—he said—"'Anything worth doing at all is worth doing well.' The 'Dream' was first of all nothing but a dream in my brain till I set to work with Fazio and made it a reality. Owing to our discovery of the way in which to compel the waters to serve us as our ...

— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

More quotes...