Word Finder - supposition

definition

Something that is supposed; an assumption made to account for known facts, conjecture.

definition

The act or an instance of supposing.

This is a pure supposition inconsistent with chronology, and based only on a misinterpretation of a passage in an old book.

Upon this supposition it might be explained that book I.

All their work is an emphatic protest against this supposition.

There is, however, some evidence in favour of the supposition that the wall was built at a much earlier date.

Their intermittent character prompted the supposition.

I made the supposition yesterday that the remark was probably deliberate.

This is, however, mere gossip and supposition.

They appear to belong to the Malay stock, and their language bears out the supposition.

Henderson prefers the hypothesis that Lennox had lost Crawford's notes; and that the identities are explained by the "remarkably good memories of Crawford and Mary, or by the more likely supposition that Crawford, before preparing his declaration for the conference" (at Westminster, December 1568) "refreshed his memory by the letter."

Nothing is positively known of his ancestry, for the supposition (originating with Du Cange) that a certain William, marshal of Champagne between 1163 and 1179, was his father appears to be erroneous.

If this appearance be not fallacious, the obvious relation between the two superscriptions will be best explained by the supposition that the author of Jude gave currency to the existing homily (James) before composing under the pseudonym of Jude.

The tone of the "Panegyric" certainly lends itself to the supposition of some historians that Trajan was inordinately vain.

The claim which he put forward involved, to all appearance, a strange falsification of history, for it seemed to rest upon the supposition that Edmund of Lancaster, and not Edward I., was the eldest son of Henry III.

For Domitian in that case would be the sixth, and the preceding five would have to begin with Galba - a most improbable supposition.

It will now be found that the various properties of gases follow from the supposition that the gas is in the normal state.

It retained the Areopagitic council in the Draconian laws by the supposition that Solon, while leaving untouched the Draconian laws concerned with the cases of homicide which came before the Ephetae, substituted a law of his own regarding wilful murder, which fell within the jurisdiction of the Areopagites.

These fossils, which are now in the British Museum, were interpreted by Dr Mantell, who made comparisons with the skeleton of Iguana, on the erroneous supposition that the resemblance in the teeth denoted some relationship to this existing lizard.

As we obtained the result on the supposition of unchanged form, we can of course only apply it for such short lengths and such short times that the part dealt with does not appreciably alter.

No explanation is given by the supposition; it is merely a statement which can hardly be accepted unless all other explanations fail.

And in reality it would be difficult to account for this feature except on the supposition that one who had lived through the events had been accustomed, when required to give a comprehensive sketch of the history of the ministry and sufferings of Jesus, to relate the facts in the main as they happened; and that a hearer of his has to a considerable extent reproduced them in the same order.

The supposition least favourable to Rousseau is that it was due to one of his numerous fits of half-insane petulance and indignation at the obligations which he was nevertheless always ready to incur.

We shall make the natural supposition that motion of the aether, say with velocity (u,v,w) at the point (x,y,z), is simply superposed on the velocity V of the optical undulations through that medium, the latter not being intrinsically altered.

If this supposition be correct, Arno was the first extant writer to apply the name Deutsch (theodisca) to the German language.

Thorell's classification (1859) of Gnathostonta, Poecilostoma, Siphonostoma, based on the mouth-organs, was long followed, though almost at the outset shown by Claus to depend on the erroneous supposition that the Poecilostoma were devoid of mandibles.

This period might no doubt be reduced to 480 years by the supposition, in itself not improbable, that some of the judges were local and contemporaneous; the suggestion has also been made that, as is usual in Oriental chronologies, the years of foreign domination were not counted, the beginning of each judge's rule being reckoned, not from the victory which brought him into power, but from the death of his predecessor; we should in this case obtain for the period from the Exodus to the foundation of the Temple 440+x+y years,' which if 30 years be assigned con 1 Petrie, Hist.

Another and perhaps a better supposition is that they belonged to the Maya group, and represented a much earlier civilization than that of the builders of Palenque, Quirigua and Copan.

Moreover there are details of Mexican civilization which are most easily accounted for on the supposition that they were borrowed from Asia.

This translation might probably be the work of Wycliffe himself; at least the similarity of style between the Gospels and the other parts favours the supposition."

The earlier supposition that these vast lava flows came chiefly from fissure eruptions has been made doubtful by the later discovery of flat-sloping volcanic cones from which much lava seems to have been poured out in a very liquid state.

It is probable that this extraordinary resemblance is due to the pupils having actually assisted their master; and this supposition enables us to surmount a diffi culty we feel in reading Aristotle's works.

In other spectra such " harmonic " ratios were also discovered, but their search was abandoned when it was found that their number did not exceed that calculated by the laws of probability on the supposition of a chance distribution.

In the case of some metals, notably bismuth, the velocity measured was different for different lines, which seems intelligible only on the supposition that the metal vapour consists of different vibrating systems which can differ with different velocities.

And where there are several such coincidences the ground for the supposition that the writing in question has been used may become very strong.

This second position is a new form of metaphysical idealism, containing the supposition, which lies at the foundation of later German philosophy, that since understanding shapes the objects out of sensations, and since nature, as we know it, consists of such objects, " understanding, though it does not make, shapes nature," as well as our knowledge.

Herbart and Lotze, both deeply affected by the Leibnitzian hypothesis of indivisible monads, supposed that man's soul is seated at a central point in the brain; and Lotze supposed that this supposition is necessary to explain the unity of consciousness.

Fechner's supposition was that the unity of consciousness belongs to the unity of the whole body; that the seat of the soul is the living body; that the soul changes its place as in different parts a process rises above the " threshold of consciousness "; and that soul is not substance but the single psychical life which has its physical manifestation in the single bodily life.

When Green said that " Nature is the system of related appearances, and related appearances are impossible apart from the action of an intelligence," he was speaking as a pure Kantian, who could be answered only by the Aristotelian position that Nature consists of related bodies beyond appearances, and by the realistic supposition that there, , h is a tactical sense of related bodies, of the inter-resisting members of the organism, from which reason infers similar related bodies beyond sense.

At the same time, like Cousin, his works show a tendency to underrate body, tending as they do to the Leibnitzian analysis of the material into the immaterial, and to the supposition that the unity of the body is only given by the soul.

According to the general supposition, the negotiations which led to the excommunication of Arius and his followers among the presbyters and deacons took place in 318 or 319, but there are good reasons for assigning the outbreak of the controversy to the time following the overthrow of Licinius by Constantine, i.e.

But at intermediate compositions we can only guess at the form of the energy-composition curve, and the freezing point composition curve, deduced from it, will vary according to the supposition which we make.

To explain the electrical properties of sulphuric acid in aqueous solution, the supposition of three ions, two of hydrogen and one of the chemical group S04, is necessary.

If this supposition be true, there would be reason to believe in the double introduction of the bird into England at least, as already hinted, but positive information is almost wholly wanting.'

The ease with which various risings were suppressed by the Franks gives colour to the supposition that they were rather the outcome of family quarrels than the revolt of an oppressed people.

If these judgments are admitted to be facts of immediate perception, the supposition of their non-existence is impossible.

Identity, then, whether of self or object, there is none, and the supposition of objects, distinct from impressions, is but a further consequence of our " propensity to feign."

I may be accounted for by the supposition that the commencement of the narrative had been omitted by the editor of xvi.

There are signs that during Ottos reign they began to have a distinct consciousness of national life, their use of the word deutsch to indicate the whole people being one of these symptoms. Their common sufferings, struggles and triumphs, however, account far more readily for this feeling than the supposition that they were elated by their king undertaking obligations which took him for years together away from his native land.

This supposition is favoured by the numerous traditions which give us the circumstances under which this or that short piece, now incorporated in a larger section, was revealed; and also by the fact that the connexion of thought in the present suras often seems to be interrupted.

The funerary customs that have been described are meaningless except on the supposition that the tomb was the regular dwelling-place of the dead.

Still less foundation exists for the belief, once widely spread, that Bactria was the cradle of the Indo-European race; it was based on the supposition that the nations of Europe had immigrated from Asia, and that the Aryan languages (Indian and Iranian) stood nearest to the original language of the Indo-Europeans.