Search the Dictionary

To distinguish by a contrast of opposite qualities. These are our complex ideas of soul and body, as contradistinguished. Locke.

g) from one place or person to another; to transmit; as, air conveys sound; words convey ideas.

To make coördinate; to put in the same order or rank; as, to coördinate ideas in classification.

coupling or joining; union; conjunction. Wit, you know, is the unexpected copulation of ideas. Johnson.

-- followed by to. Words being but empty sounds, any farther than they are signs of our ideas, we can not but assent to them as they correspond to those ideas we have, but no farther. Locke.

prove, the reality of external objects as corresponding to, and being the ground of, the ideas of which only the mind has direct cognizance. The cosmothetic idealists . . . deny that mind is immediately conscious of matter. Sir W. Hamilton.

game, in which questions and answers are made so as to involve ludicrous combinations of ideas. Pepys. To be at cross-purposes, to misunderstand or to act counter to one another without intending it; -- said of persons.

across the page, instead of down the columns, thus producing a ludicrous combination of ideas.

The art of communicating ideas by certain movements and positions of the fingers; -- a method of conversing practiced by the deaf and dumb.

ed from premises; deducible. All knowledge of causes is deductive. Glanvill. Notions and ideas . . . used in a deductive process. Whewell.

There seem to be certain bounds to the quickness and slowness of the succession of those ideas, . . . beyond which they can neither delay nor hasten. Locke.

ve; beguiling; delusory; as, delusive arts; a delusive dream. Delusive and unsubstantial ideas. Whewell. -- De*lu"sive*ly, adv. -- De*lu"sive*ness, n.

e possibility of doubt; indubitable evidence, to the senses or reason. Those intervening ideas which serve to show the agreement of any two others are called "proofs;" and where agreement or disagreement is by this means plainly and clearly perceived, it is called demonstration. Locke.

ite, and the like. This earth and its dependencies. T. Burnet. Modes I call such complex ideas which . . . are considered as dependencies on or affections of substances. Locke.

To form in the mind by new combinations of ideas, new applications of principles, or new arrangement of parts; to formulate by thought; to contrive; to excogitate; to invent; to plan; to scheme; as, to devise an engine, a new mode of writing, a plan of defense, or an argument. To devise curious works. Ex. CCTV. 32. Dev…

The science of ideas or of the nature and laws of being -- higher metaphysics. By Kant, it was employed to signify the logic of appearances or illusions, whether these arise from accident or error, or from those necessary limitations which, according to this philosopher, originate in the constitution of the human intel…

Choice of words for the expression of ideas; the construction, disposition, and application of words in discourse, with regard to clearness, accuracy, variety, etc.; mode of expression; language; as, the diction of Chaucer's poems. His diction blazes up into a sudden explosion of prophetic grandeur. De Quincey.…

r the understanding; as, a star is discernible by the eye; the identity of difference of ideas is discernible by the understanding. The effect of the privations and sufferings . . . was discernible to the last in his temper and deportment. Macaulay.

lter the true complexion or appearance of; to put a false hue upon. To discolor all your ideas. Wat

ter for growth and propagation, like seed; to spread abroad; to diffuse; as, principles, ideas, opinions, and errors are disseminated when they are spread abroad for propagation.