Search the Dictionary

A coarse round farm basket. [Obs. or Prov. Eng. & Scot.] Tusser.

ticism [of Hume] proceeds upon the erroneous hypothesis that he was a dogmatist. He was a skeptic; that is, he accepted the principles asserted by the prevailing dogmatism: and only showed that such and such conclusions were, on these principles, inevitable. Sir W. Hamilton.

Of or pertaining to a sceptic or skepticism; characterized by skepticism; hesitating to admit the certainly of doctrines or principles; doubting of everything.

tainty. That momentary amazement, and irresolution, and confusion, which is the result of skepticism. Hune.

To doubt; to pretend to doubt of everything. [R.] To skepticize, where no one else will . . . hesitate. Shaftesbury.

Incomprehensibility of things; the doctrine held by the ancient Skeptic philosophers, that human knowledge never amounts to certainty, but only to probability.

sitive conclusion (as taught by the school of Herbert Spencer); -- opposed alike dogmatic skepticism and to dogmatic theism.

Doubting; skeptical. [Obs.] Cudworth.

n empirical method in science. It received its impetus from the unsystematic but vigorous skepticism of Pierre Bayle, the physical doctrines of Newton, and the epistemological theories of Locke, in the preceding century. Its chief center was in France, where it gave rise to the skepticism of Voltaire , the naturalism o…

nd luxury; to glut one's self. Dryden. The pampered monarch lay battening in ease. Garth. Skeptics, with a taste for carrion, who batten on the hideous facts in history, -- persecutions, inquisitions. Emerson.

authority of revelation or of the church; an unbeliever; -- a term assumed by deists and skeptics in the eighteenth century. Atheist is an old-fashioned word: I'm a freethinker, child. Addison.

Exhibiting undue boldness of speculation; skeptical.

Not credulous; indisposed to admit or accept that which is related as true, skeptical; unbelieving. Bacon. A fantastical incredulous fool. Bp. Wilkins.

he practice prevails this day. This custom makes the short-sighted bigots, and the warier skeptics, as far as it prevails. Locke.

Skepticism; universal doubt.

A follower of Pyrrho; a skeptic.

The state or condition of having recoiled. The recoil from formalism is skepticism. F. W. Robertson.

Skepticism; skeptical philosophy. [R.] Among their products were the system of Locke, the scepsis of Hume, the critical philosophy of kant. J. martineau.

etc. See Skeptic, Skeptical, Skepticism, etc.

n Great Britain, who professed to be seeking the true church, ministry, and sacraments. A skeptic [is] ever seeking and never finds, like our new upstart sect of Seekers. Bullokar.