PROXIMATE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Proximate

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/prˈɑksəmət/ Listen

adjective

Proximate adj. Nearest; next immediately preceding or following. "Proximate ancestors." "The proximate natural causes of it (the deluge)."

Proximate analysis (Chem.), an analysis which determines the proximate principles of any substance, as contrasted with an ultimate analysis.

Proximate cause.

(a)

A cause which immediately precedes and produces the effect, as distinguished from the remote, mediate, or predisposing cause.

(b)

That which in ordinary natural sequence produces a specific result, no independent disturbing agencies intervening.

Proximate principle (Physiol. Chem.), one of a class of bodies existing ready formed in animal and vegetable tissues, and separable by chemical analysis, as albumin, sugar, collagen, fat, etc.

Synonyms: Nearest; next; closest; immediate; direct.

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Etymology of 'Proximate'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Proximate" Quotes from Famous Books

... "Sensation is not the proximate cause of organic movements. It may be so with the higher animals, but it cannot be shown to be so with plants, nor even with all known animals. At the outset of life there was none of that sensation which could only arise where organic beings ...

— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... of the parties to the contest and the grounds on which they respectively stand. I do not now refer to the original causes of controversy—to the comparative claims of Statehood and Union, or to the question of the right or the wrong of secession—but to the proximate and immediate ...

— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... their great object, and wickedness was left unrebuked both in Clergy and laity. A great impulse was given to the sale of indulgences or pardons, an evil practice which brought in large sums of money to the papal exchequer, and at the same time led to such abuses as probably to become a principal proximate cause of the Reformation. ...

— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt

... bought a copy of this book he was willing to do what was asked, and to attempt also to translate into German Phillips' "Proximate Causes of the Material Phenomena of the Universe," or what the translator called "his tale of an apple and a pear." But Phillips changed his mind about the "Dairyman's Daughter" and commissioned a compilation of "Newgate Lives ...

— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... monuments, that a voice may forever be sounding audibly in human ears of homage to these powers, and that even alien feelings may be compelled into secret submission to their influence. Therefore, amongst the number of those who value such things, upon the scale of direct proximate utility, rank not me: that arithmetica officina is in my years abominable. But still I affirm that, in our analysis of an ordinary university, or "college" as it is provincially called, we have not yet ...

— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

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