noun
definition
A kind of macro in source code that replaces one text string with another wherever it occurs.
verb
definition
To determine with precision; to mark out with distinctness; to ascertain or exhibit clearly.
example
the defining power of an optical instrument
definition
To settle, decide (an argument etc.)
definition
To express the essential nature of something.
example
I define myself as a techno-anarchist.
definition
To state the meaning of a word, phrase, sign, or symbol.
example
The textbook defined speed as velocity divided by time.
definition
To describe, explain, or make definite and clear; used to request the listener or other person to elaborate or explain more clearly his or her intended meaning of a word or expression.
example
Person 1: Is she good at math?
definition
To demark sharply the outlines or limits of an area or concept.
example
to define the legal boundaries of a property
definition
To establish the referent of a term or notation.
Examples of define in a Sentence
The child's eagerness and interest carry her over many obstacles that would be our undoing if we stopped to define and explain everything.
It will not be welfare (or, at least depending on how you define the term, it will not be perceived as welfare).
To discover and define those laws is the problem of history.
Even so, shared interest didn't define their relationship.
Ask Martha to define cheating.
It is then possible to define by a parallel elaboration what is meant by classes of classes, classes of relations, relations between classes, and so on.
The Spanish and Portuguese crowns attempted to define the limits between their American colonies in 1750 and 1777, and the lines adopted still serve in great part to separate Brazil from its neighbours.
It is convenient here to define the two chief types of cell-form which characterize tissues of the higher plants.
The remaining groups are harder to define, with the exception of the (3) Capitelliformia, which are mud-living worms of an "oligochaetous" appearance, and with some affinities to that order.
The answers to those questions are what define the Internet.
Without having recourse to any elaborate process of economic reasoning, by confining out attention to one simple question, namely, what happened, we can establish conclusions of the greatest interest to economic historians and, further, define the problem we have to investigate.
The exact limits of Rabbula's work are difficult to define.
They endeavoured to define aspects of vegetation in which the forms exhibited an obvious adaptation to their climatic surroundings.
So long as the intervening territory was a wilderness no effort was made to define the boundary line.
I cannot fathom or define their meaning any more than I can fathom or define love or religion or goodness.
Disease we may define, accordingly, as any departure from the normal standard of structure or function of a tissue or organ.
I define war as armed conflict occurring between nation-states or, in the case of civil wars, between factions within nation-states.
Two elements define the position of the plane passing through the attracting centre in which the orbit lies.
But besides the vocation he had freely selected and assiduously laboured to fulfil, two more external influences helped to shape Martineau's mind and define his problem and his work; the awakening of English thought to the problems which underlie both philosophy and religion, and the new and higher opportunities offered for their discussion in the periodical press.
The sciences, for example, all seek to define their own species; dialectic, on the other hand, sets forth the conditions which all definitions must satisfy whatever their subject matter.
His character, like his namesake the decemvir's is not easy to define.
While all emo hair styles are unique, there are certain characteristics they share that define them as emo looks.
We may otherwise define it by saying that a line of electric force is a line so drawn in a field of electric force that its direction coincides at every point with the resultant electric force at that point.
In 1530 it became necessary to define his position against both Romanists and Zwinglians.
The conception of a race of animals or of plants as a group of individuals capable of being arranged in an orderly series with respect to the condition of a particular character enables us to define the "type" of that character proper to the race.
Without resorting to this exaggeration, Mommsen can speak with perfect truth of the " enormous space occupied by the burial vaults of Christian Rome, not surpassed even by the cloacae or sewers of Republican Rome," but the data are too vague to warrant any attempt to define their dimensions.
If you ask me to define the amount more accurately, I say that it cannot be done.
At the same time it soon appeared that they could not agree among themselves when they came to ask what it is, but in attempting to define it seem to have gone through the whole gamut of mind.
The canonists define the degrees of suspicion as "light" calling for vigilance, "vehement" demanding denunciation, and "violent" requiring punishment.
In the ensuing account a constant repetition of the names of the main archipelagoes will be found; it may of course be assumed that each successive voyager added something to the knowledge of them, but on the other hand, as has been said, islands were often rediscovered and renamed in cases where later voyagers took no account of the work of their predecessors, or where the earlier voyagers were unable clearly to define the positions of their discoveries.
We must now proceed to define more exactly the peculiar and distinctive character of the Gnostic system.
The organization of a municipal system, which should regulate the governments of all these towns on a uniform basis, and define their relation to the Roman government, was probably the work of Sulla, who certainly gave great impetus to the foundation in the provinces of citizen colonies, which were the earliest municipia outside Italy, and enjoyed the same status as the Italian towns.
We might define temperature in the case of a flame or vacuum tube by the temperature which a small totally reflecting body would tend to take up if placed at the spot, but this definition would fail in the case of a spark discharge.
We may therefore still take 2Nu/V to be the width of the band if we define its edge to be the frequency at which its intensity has fallen to 22% of the central intensity.
It is now possible to define the suborder Hyracoidea as including ungulates with a centrale in the carpus, plantigrade feet, in which the first and fifth toes are reduced in greater or less degree, and clavicles and a foramen in the lower end of the humerus are absent.
An early step accomplished by Ostwald in this direction is to define ozone in its relation to oxygen, considering the former as differing from the latter by an excess of energy, measurable as heat of transformation, instead of defining the difference as diatomic molecules in oxygen, and triatomic in ozone.
Our main task, then, is to define the nature, origin and date of the parent document, and if possible its own literary antecedents.
Each form has special uses, generally difficult to define.
Unfortunately Buckle either could not define, or cared not to define, the general conceptions with which he worked, such as those denoted by the terms "civilization," "history," "science," "law," "scepticism," and "protective spirit"; the consequence is that his arguments are often fallacies.
Veronius is willing to waive the difficult point of church infallibility as the Council of Trent did not define it.
Before doing this, however, it was necessary to define the limits of tribal properties already existing - a work of great difficulty - with a view to their ultimate division, and at the same time to guard against any premature traffic in the rights of Arabs in the lands about to be divided.
The Saxon Confession of Wittenberg, June 1551, while protesting against the same errors, equally abstains from trying to define narrowly how Christ is present in the sacrament.
This qualification, though generally understood, is difficult to define.
The struggle against Gnosticism, which had been going on during the middle part of the century, had compelled the Church both to define her creed and to draw a sharper line of demarcation than heretofore between those writings whose authority she regarded as absolute and all others.
Lying south and east of the main stream is a vast, densely forested region called Venezuelan Guiana, diversified by ranges of low mountains, irregular broken ridges and granitic masses, which define the courses of many unexplored tributaries of the Orinoco.
When the properties of the resultant substance are different from those of the components and it is not a chemical compound we define it as a solution.
His most important achievement was to define "salts" - a term formerly used in the most loose and indeterminate way - as the compounds formed by the union of acids and bases, and further to distinguish between neutral, basic and acid salts.
The aim of Laokoon, which ranks as a classic, not only in German but in European literature, is to define by analysis the limitations of poetry and the plastic arts.
In shape it is an irregular oblong, and it is very difficult to define its boundaries, as at one extremity it wanders into Oudh, while on the south the villages of the state of Rewa and those of this district are hopelessly intermingled.
From remains of the age of the IVth Dynasty he is able to define to some extent the type of the population of Lower Egypt as having a better cranial and muscular development than that of Upper Egypt, probably through immigration from Syria.