TERMS STARTING WITH
Property: (Gr. idion; Lat. proprium) In Aristotle's logic (1) an attribute common to all members of a species and peculiar to them; (2) an attribute of the above sort not belonging to the essence of the species, but necessarily following from it. -- G.R.M.
property ::: a. --> That which is proper to anything; a peculiar quality of a thing; that which is inherent in a subject, or naturally essential to it; an attribute; as, sweetness is a property of sugar.
An acquired or artificial quality; that which is given by art, or bestowed by man; as, the poem has the properties which constitute excellence.
The exclusive right of possessing, enjoying, and disposing of a thing; ownership; title.
property ::: something owned; a possession.
TERMS ANYWHERE
1. The act, power or property of appealing, alluring, enticing or inviting. 2. A thing or feature which draws by appealing to desires, tastes, etc. 3. The action of a body or substance in drawing to itself, by some physical force, another to which it is not materially attached; the force thus exercised. attractions.
2. In psychology, the act or process of exercising the mind, the faculty of connecting judgments; the power and fact of using reason; the thought-processes of discussion, debate, argumentation or inference; the manifestation of the discursive property of the mind; the actual use of arguments with a view to convince or persuade; the art and method or proving or demonstrating; the orderly development of thought with a view to, or the attainment of a conclusion believed to be valid. -- The origin, nature and value of reasoning are debated questions, with their answers ranging from spiritualism (reasoning as the exercise of a faculty of the soul) to materialism (reasoning as an epiphenomenon depending on the brain), with all the modern schools of psychology ordering themselves between them. A few points of agreement might be mentioned here: reasoning follows judgment and apprehension, whichever of the last two thought-processes comes first in our psychological development; reasoning proceeds according to four main types, namely deductive, inductive, presumptive and deceptive; reasoning assumes a belief in its own validity undisturbed by doubt, and implies various logical habits and methods which may be organized into a logical doctrine; reasoning requires a reference to some ultimate principles to justify its progress 3. In logic, Reasoning is the process of inference, it is the process of passing from certain propositions already known or assumed to be true, to another truth distinct from them but following from them; it is a discourse or argument which infers one proposition from another, or from a group of others having some common elements between them. The inference is necessary in the case of deductive reasoning; and contingent, probable or wrong, in the case of inductive, presumptive or deceptive reasoning respectively. -- There are various types of reasoning, and proper methods for each type. The definition, discussion, development and evaluation of these types and methods form an important branch of logic and its subdivisions. The details of the application of reasoning to the various sciences, form the subject of methodology. All these types are reducible to one or the other of the two fundamental processes or reasoning, namely deduction and induction. It must be added that the logical study of reasoning is normative logic does not analyze it simply in its natural development, but with a view to guide it towards coherence, validity or truth. -- T.G.
2. Under the influence of Franz Brentano (1838-1917), Husserl coined the name "Intentionalität" for what he saw is the fundamental character of subjective processes. The reflectively experienceable part of one's stream of consciousness is, on the one hand, consciousness of subjective processes as immanent in the stream itself and, on the other hand, consciousness of other objects as transcending the stieam. This character of subjective processes as consciousness of, as processes in which something is intended, is a property they have intrinsically, regardless of whether what is intended in them exists. Seeing intentionality as the fundamental attribute of subjective processes, Husseil held that phenomenology must describe them not only with respect to their immanent components but also with respect to their intended objects, as intended, in the language of his Ideen, phenomenological description must be "noematic," as well as "noetic" and "hyletic."
abandonment ::: n. --> The act of abandoning, or the state of being abandoned; total desertion; relinquishment.
The relinquishment by the insured to the underwriters of what may remain of the property insured after a loss or damage by a peril insured against.
The relinquishment of a right, claim, or privilege, as to mill site, etc.
The voluntary leaving of a person to whom one is bound
abstract ::: a. --> Withdraw; separate.
Considered apart from any application to a particular object; separated from matter; existing in the mind only; as, abstract truth, abstract numbers. Hence: ideal; abstruse; difficult.
Expressing a particular property of an object viewed apart from the other properties which constitute it; -- opposed to concrete; as, honesty is an abstract word.
Resulting from the mental faculty of abstraction; general
abstractiveness ::: n. --> The quality of being abstractive; abstractive property.
accession ::: n. --> A coming to; the act of acceding and becoming joined; as, a king&
accident ::: n. --> Literally, a befalling; an event that takes place without one&
acquest ::: n. --> Acquisition; the thing gained.
Property acquired by purchase, gift, or otherwise than by inheritance.
acquisitiveness ::: n. --> The quality of being acquisitive; propensity to acquire property; desire of possession.
The faculty to which the phrenologists attribute the desire of acquiring and possessing.
acred ::: a. --> Possessing acres or landed property; -- used in composition; as, large-acred men.
actinism ::: n. --> The property of radiant energy (found chiefly in solar or electric light) by which chemical changes are produced, as in photography.
advancement ::: v. t. --> The act of advancing, or the state of being advanced; progression; improvement; furtherance; promotion to a higher place or dignity; as, the advancement of learning.
An advance of money or value; payment in advance. See Advance, 5.
Property given, usually by a parent to a child, in advance of a future distribution.
Settlement on a wife, or jointure.
aeolotropic ::: a. --> Exhibiting differences of quality or property in different directions; not isotropic.
aeolotropy ::: n. --> Difference of quality or property in different directions.
affection ::: n. --> The act of affecting or acting upon; the state of being affected.
An attribute; a quality or property; a condition; a bodily state; as, figure, weight, etc. , are affections of bodies.
Bent of mind; a feeling or natural impulse or natural impulse acting upon and swaying the mind; any emotion; as, the benevolent affections, esteem, gratitude, etc.; the malevolent affections, hatred, envy, etc.; inclination; disposition; propensity;
affirmation ::: n. --> Confirmation of anything established; ratification; as, the affirmation of a law.
The act of affirming or asserting as true; assertion; -- opposed to negation or denial.
That which is asserted; an assertion; a positive statement; an averment; as, an affirmation, by the vender, of title to property sold, or of its quality.
A solemn declaration made under the penalties of
affluence ::: n. --> A flowing to or towards; a concourse; an influx.
An abundant supply, as of thought, words, feelings, etc.; profusion; also, abundance of property; wealth.
agrarianism ::: n. --> An equal or equitable division of landed property; the principles or acts of those who favor a redistribution of land.
alien ::: a. --> Not belonging to the same country, land, or government, or to the citizens or subjects thereof; foreign; as, alien subjects, enemies, property, shores.
Wholly different in nature; foreign; adverse; inconsistent (with); incongruous; -- followed by from or sometimes by to; as, principles alien from our religion. ::: n.
alienate ::: a. --> Estranged; withdrawn in affection; foreign; -- with from. ::: v. t. --> To convey or transfer to another, as title, property, or right; to part voluntarily with ownership of.
To withdraw, as the affections; to make indifferent of averse, where love or friendship before subsisted; to estrange; to
alienation ::: n. --> The act of alienating, or the state of being alienated.
A transfer of title, or a legal conveyance of property to another.
A withdrawing or estrangement, as of the affections.
Mental alienation; derangement of the mental faculties; insanity; as, alienation of mind.
alienee ::: n. --> One to whom the title of property is transferred; -- opposed to alienor.
aliene ::: v. t. --> To alien or alienate; to transfer, as title or property; as, to aliene an estate.
alienor ::: n. --> One who alienates or transfers property to another.
alkalinity ::: n. --> The quality which constitutes an alkali; alkaline property.
allodium ::: n. --> Freehold estate; land which is the absolute property of the owner; real estate held in absolute independence, without being subject to any rent, service, or acknowledgment to a superior. It is thus opposed to feud.
allomorphism ::: n. --> The property which constitutes an allomorph; the change involved in becoming an allomorph.
allotropicity ::: n. --> Allotropic property or nature.
allotropy ::: n. --> The property of existing in two or more conditions which are distinct in their physical or chemical relations.
annexation ::: v. t. --> The act of annexing; process of attaching, adding, or appending; the act of connecting; union; as, the annexation of Texas to the United States, or of chattels to the freehold.
The union of property with a freehold so as to become a fixture. Bouvier. (b) (Scots Law) The appropriation of lands or rents to the crown.
annihilate ::: v. t. --> To reduce to nothing or nonexistence; to destroy the existence of; to cause to cease to be.
To destroy the form or peculiar distinctive properties of, so that the specific thing no longer exists; as, to annihilate a forest by cutting down the trees.
To destroy or eradicate, as a property or attribute of a thing; to make of no effect; to destroy the force, etc., of; as, to annihilate an argument, law, rights, goodness.
antiperiodic ::: n. --> A remedy possessing the property of preventing the return of periodic paroxysms, or exacerbations, of disease, as in intermittent fevers.
Antitypy: The property of concepts or objects of thought to resist attribution of qualities or postulates incompatible with their semantic value and ontological nature. -- T.G.
Apparent: (Lat, ad + parere, to come forth) 1. Property of seeming to be real or factual. 2. Obvious or clearly given to the mind or senses. Appearance: Neutrally, a presentation to an observer. Epistemology: A sensuously observable state of affairs. The mental or subjective correlate of a thing-in-itself. A sensuous object existent or possible, in space and time, related by the categories (Kant). It differs from illusion by its objectivity or logical validity. Metaphysics: A degree of truth or reality; a fragmentary and self-contradictory judgment about reality.
applicatory ::: a. --> Having the property of applying; applicative; practical. ::: n. --> That which applies.
apportionment ::: n. --> The act of apportioning; a dividing into just proportions or shares; a division or shares; a division and assignment, to each proprietor, of his just portion of an undivided right or property.
A related but different paradox is Grelling's (1908). Let us distinguish adjectives -- ie, words denoting properties -- as autological or i according as they do or do not have the property which they denote (in particular, adjectives denoting properties which cannot belong to words at all will be heterological). Then, e.g., the words polysyllabic, common, significant, prosaic are autological, while new, alive, useless, ambiguous, long are heterological. On their face, these definitions of autological and heterological are unobjectionable (compare the definition of onomatopoetic as similar in sound to that which it denotes). But paradox arises when we ask whether the word heterological is autological or heterological.
arrestee ::: v. --> The person in whose hands is the property attached by arrestment.
As a concrete noun, singular ("a value") or plural ("values"), our term refers either to things which have this property of value or to things which are valued (see below).
assessable ::: a. --> Liable to be assessed or taxed; as, assessable property.
assessment ::: n. --> The act of assessing; the act of determining an amount to be paid; as, an assessment of damages, or of taxes; an assessment of the members of a club.
A valuation of property or profits of business, for the purpose of taxation; such valuation and an adjudging of the proper sum to be levied on the property; as, an assessment of property or an assessment on property.
The specific sum levied or assessed.
assessor ::: v. --> One appointed or elected to assist a judge or magistrate with his special knowledge of the subject to be decided; as legal assessors, nautical assessors.
One who sits by another, as next in dignity, or as an assistant and adviser; an associate in office.
One appointed to assess persons or property for the purpose of taxation.
assets ::: n. pl. --> Property of a deceased person, subject by law to the payment of his debts and legacies; -- called assets because sufficient to render the executor or administrator liable to the creditors and legatees, so far as such goods or estate may extend.
Effects of an insolvent debtor or bankrupt, applicable to the payment of debts.
The entire property of all sorts, belonging to a person, a corporation, or an estate; as, the assets of a merchant or a
assignee ::: v. --> A person to whom an assignment is made; a person appointed or deputed by another to do some act, perform some business, or enjoy some right, privilege, or property; as, an assignee of a bankrupt. See Assignment (c). An assignee may be by special appointment or deed, or be created by jaw; as an executor.
In England, the persons appointed, under a commission of bankruptcy, to manage the estate of a bankrupt for the benefit of his creditors.
assignment ::: n. --> An allotting or an appointment to a particular person or use; or for a particular time, as of a cause or causes in court.
A transfer of title or interest by writing, as of lease, bond, note, or bill of exchange; a transfer of the whole of some particular estate or interest in lands.
The writing by which an interest is transferred.
The transfer of the property of a bankrupt to certain persons called assignees, in whom it is vested for the benefit of
associativity "programming" The property of an {operator} that says whether a sequence of three or more expressions combined by the operator will be evaluated from left to right (left associative) or right to left (right associative). For example, in {Perl}, the {lazy and} operator && is left associative so in the expression: $i "= 0 && $x[$i] "= 0 && $y[$x[$i]] == 0 the left-most && is evaluated first, whereas = is right associative, so in $a = $b = 42 the right-most assignment is performed first. (2007-06-16)
AST Computers, LLC "company" The private company formed in January 1999 when Mr. Beny Alagem, the former chairman of {Packard Bell NEC, Inc.}, bought the name and intellectual property of {AST Research, Inc.}. AST Computers, LLC provide {hardware, software}, and services for small US businesses. {Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.}, of Seoul, Korea, owns a minority stake. {(http://ast.com/)}. Address: Los Angeles, CA, USA. (2000-03-28)
asterism ::: n. --> A constellation.
A small cluster of stars.
An asterisk, or mark of reference.
Three asterisks placed in this manner, /, to direct attention to a particular passage.
An optical property of some crystals which exhibit a star-shaped by reflected light, as star sapphire, or by transmitted light, as some mica.
AST Research, Inc. "company" A company, formed some time before 1980, that was a leading {personal computer} manufacturer. AST developed {desktop computers}, {mobile computers}, and {servers} that were sold in more than 100 countries worldwide. In January 1999 the name and intellectual property were acquired by a new company named {AST Computers, LLC}. As of 2000-03-02 it was trading as {ARI Service}. (2000-03-21)
attraction ::: n. --> An invisible power in a body by which it draws anything to itself; the power in nature acting mutually between bodies or ultimate particles, tending to draw them together, or to produce their cohesion or combination, and conversely resisting separation.
The act or property of attracting; the effect of the power or operation of attraction.
The power or act of alluring, drawing to, inviting, or engaging; an attractive quality; as, the attraction of beauty or
Attribute: Commonly, what is proper to a thing (Latm, ad-tribuere, to assign, to ascribe, to bestow). Loosely assimilated to a quality, a property, a characteristic, a peculiarity, a circumstance, a state, a category, a mode or an accident, though there are differences among all these terms. For example, a quality is an inherent property (the qualities of matter), while an attribute refers to the actual properties of a thing only indirectly known (the attributes of God). Another difference between attribute and quality is that the former refers to the characteristics of an infinite being, while the latter is used for the characteristics of a finite being. In metaphysics, an attribute is what is indispensable to a spiritual or material substance; or that which expresses the nature of a thing; or that without which a thing is unthinkable. As such, it implies necessarily a relation to some substance of which it is an aspect or conception. But it cannot be a substance, as it does not exist by itself. The transcendental attributes are those which belong to a being because it is a being: there are three of them, the one, the true and the good, each adding something positive to the idea of being. The word attribute has been and still is used more readily, with various implications, by substantialist systems. In the 17th century, for example, it denoted the actual manifestations of substance. [Thus, Descartes regarded extension and thought as the two ultimate, simple and original attributes of reality, all else being modifications of them. With Spinoza, extension and thought became the only known attributes of Deity, each expressing in a definite manner, though not exclusively, the infinite essence of God as the only substance. The change in the meaning of substance after Hume and Kant is best illustrated by this quotation from Whitehead: "We diverge from Descartes by holding that what he has described as primary attributes of physical bodies, are really the forms of internal relationships between actual occasions and within actual occasions" (Process and Reality, p. 471).] The use of the notion of attribute, however, is still favoured by contemporary thinkers. Thus, John Boodin speaks of the five attributes of reality, namely: Energy (source of activity), Space (extension), Time (change), Consciousness (active awareness), and Form (organization, structure). In theodicy, the term attribute is used for the essential characteristics of God. The divine attributes are the various aspects under which God is viewed, each being treated as a separate perfection. As God is free from composition, we know him only in a mediate and synthetic way thrgugh his attributes. In logic, an attribute is that which is predicated or anything, that which Is affirmed or denied of the subject of a proposition. More specifically, an attribute may be either a category or a predicable; but it cannot be an individual materially. Attributes may be essential or accidental, necessary or contingent. In grammar, an attribute is an adjective, or an adjectival clause, or an equivalent adjunct expressing a characteristic referred to a subject through a verb. Because of this reference, an attribute may also be a substantive, as a class-name, but not a proper name as a rule. An attribute is never a verb, thus differing from a predicate which may consist of a verb often having some object or qualifying words. In natural history, what is permanent and essential in a species, an individual or in its parts. In psychology, it denotes the way (such as intensity, duration or quality) in which sensations, feelings or images can differ from one another. In art, an attribute is a material or a conventional symbol, distinction or decoration.
aucht ::: n. --> Property; possession.
auction ::: n. --> A public sale of property to the highest bidder, esp. by a person licensed and authorized for the purpose; a vendue.
The things sold by auction or put up to auction. ::: v. t. --> To sell by auction.
avaricious ::: a. --> Actuated by avarice; greedy of gain; immoderately desirous of accumulating property.
avulsion ::: n. --> A tearing asunder; a forcible separation.
A fragment torn off.
The sudden removal of lands or soil from the estate of one man to that of another by an inundation or a current, or by a sudden change in the course of a river by which a part of the estate of one man is cut off and joined to the estate of another. The property in the part thus separated, or cut off, continues in the original owner.
Axiom of Comprehension "logic" An {axiom schema} of {set theory} which states: if P(x) is a {property} then {x : P} is a set. I.e. all the things with some property form a set. Acceptance of this axiom leads to {Russell's Paradox} which is why {Zermelo set theory} replaces it with a restricted form. (1995-03-31)
ayu1 ::: air, wind, gas; the gaseous condition of material being, one of the pañcabhūta: material Force "modifying its first ethereal status"(akasa) to assume "a second, called in the old language the aerial, of which the special property is contact between force and force, contact that is the basis of all material relations".V Vayu
backward combatability "humour" /bak'w*d k*m-bat'*-bil'*-tee/ (Play on "{backward compatibility}") A property of hardware or software revisions in which previous {protocols}, formats, layouts, etc. are irrevocably discarded in favour of "new and improved" protocols, formats and layouts, leaving the previous ones not merely deprecated but actively defeated. (Too often, the old and new versions cannot definitively be distinguished, such that lingering instances of the previous ones yield crashes or other infelicitous effects, as opposed to a simple "version mismatch" message.) A backward compatible change, on the other hand, allows old versions to coexist without crashes or error messages, but too many major changes incorporating elaborate backward compatibility processing can lead to extreme {software bloat}. See also {flag day}. [{Jargon File}] (2003-06-23)
bailee ::: n. --> The person to whom goods are committed in trust, and who has a temporary possession and a qualified property in them, for the purposes of the trust.
bankruptcy ::: 1. A state of complete lack of some abstract property; "spiritual bankruptcy”; "moral bankruptcy”; "intellectual bankruptcy”. 2. Depleted of valuable qualities or characteristics.
bargainee ::: v. i. --> The party to a contract who receives, or agrees to receive, the property sold.
bargain ::: n. --> An agreement between parties concerning the sale of property; or a contract by which one party binds himself to transfer the right to some property for a consideration, and the other party binds himself to receive the property and pay the consideration.
An agreement or stipulation; mutual pledge.
A purchase; also ( when not qualified), a gainful transaction; an advantageous purchase; as, to buy a thing at a bargain.
The thing stipulated or purchased; also, anything bought
bargainor ::: n. --> One who makes a bargain, or contracts with another; esp., one who sells, or contracts to sell, property to another.
beforehand ::: adv. --> In a state of anticipation ore preoccupation; in advance; -- often followed by with.
By way of preparation, or preliminary; previously; aforetime. ::: a. --> In comfortable circumstances as regards property;
belong ::: 1. To be a part of or adjunct. 2. To be the property, attribute, or possession of. belongs.
belong ::: v. i. --> To be the property of; as, Jamaica belongs to Great Britain.
To be a part of, or connected with; to be appendant or related; to owe allegiance or service.
To be the concern or proper business or function of; to appertain to.
To be suitable for; to be due to.
To be native to, or an inhabitant of; esp. to have a
benefit ::: n. --> An act of kindness; a favor conferred.
Whatever promotes prosperity and personal happiness, or adds value to property; advantage; profit.
A theatrical performance, a concert, or the like, the proceeds of which do not go to the lessee of the theater or to the company, but to some individual actor, or to some charitable use.
Beneficence; liberality.
Natural advantages; endowments; accomplishments.
bequeathed ::: disposed of (property, etc.) by last will; fig. handed down, passed on.
bequeath ::: v. t. --> To give or leave by will; to give by testament; -- said especially of personal property.
To hand down; to transmit.
To give; to offer; to commit.
bequest ::: n. --> The act of bequeathing or leaving by will; as, a bequest of property by A. to B.
That which is left by will, esp. personal property; a legacy; also, a gift. ::: v. t. --> To bequeath, or leave as a legacy.
Bezier curve "graphics" A type of curve defined by mathematical formulae, used in {computer graphics}. A curve with coordinates P(u), where u varies from 0 at one end of the curve to 1 at the other, is defined by a set of n+1 "control points" (X(i), Y(i), Z(i)) for i = 0 to n. P(u) = Sum i=0..n [(X(i), Y(i), Z(i)) * B(i, n, u)] B(i, n, u) = C(n, i) * u^i * (1-u)^(n-i) C(n, i) = n!/i!/(n-i)! A Bezier curve (or surface) is defined by its control points, which makes it invariant under any {affine mapping} (translation, rotation, parallel projection), and thus even under a change in the axis system. You need only to transform the control points and then compute the new curve. The control polygon defined by the points is itself affine invariant. Bezier curves also have the variation-diminishing property. This makes them easier to split compared to other types of curve such as {Hermite} or {B-spline}. Other important properties are multiple values, global and local control, versatility, and order of continuity. [What do these properties mean?] (1996-06-12)
biliteralism ::: n. --> The property or state of being biliteral.
bindery "networking" A {Novell Netware} database that contains definitions for entities such as users, groups, and {workgroups}. The bindery allows the network supervisor to design an organised and secure operating environment based on the individual requirements of each of these entities. The bindery has three components: objects, properties, and property data sets. Objects represent any physical or logical entity, including users, user groups, file servers. Properties are characteristics of each object (e.g. passwords, account restrictions, {internetwork addresses}). Property data sets are the values assigned to an entity's bindery properties. [Netware Version 3.11 "Concepts" documentation (a glossary of Netware-related terms)]. (1996-03-07)
bindingness ::: n. --> The condition or property of being binding; obligatory quality.
bitangent ::: a. --> Possessing the property of touching at two points. ::: n. --> A line that touches a curve in two points.
Property: (Gr. idion; Lat. proprium) In Aristotle's logic (1) an attribute common to all members of a species and peculiar to them; (2) an attribute of the above sort not belonging to the essence of the species, but necessarily following from it. -- G.R.M.
bug "programming" An unwanted and unintended property of a {program} or piece of {hardware}, especially one that causes it to malfunction. Antonym of {feature}. E.g. "There's a bug in the editor: it writes things out backward." The identification and removal of bugs in a program is called "{debugging}". Admiral {Grace Hopper} (an early computing pioneer better known for inventing {COBOL}) liked to tell a story in which a technician solved a {glitch} in the {Harvard Mark II machine} by pulling an actual insect out from between the contacts of one of its relays, and she subsequently promulgated {bug} in its hackish sense as a joke about the incident (though, as she was careful to admit, she was not there when it happened). For many years the logbook associated with the incident and the actual bug in question (a moth) sat in a display case at the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC). The entire story, with a picture of the logbook and the moth taped into it, is recorded in the "Annals of the History of Computing", Vol. 3, No. 3 (July 1981), pp. 285--286. The text of the log entry (from September 9, 1947), reads "1545 Relay
buoyancy ::: n. --> The property of floating on the surface of a liquid, or in a fluid, as in the atmosphere; specific lightness, which is inversely as the weight compared with that of an equal volume of water.
The upward pressure exerted upon a floating body by a fluid, which is equal to the weight of the body; hence, also, the weight of a floating body, as measured by the volume of fluid displaced.
Cheerfulness; vivacity; liveliness; sprightliness; -- the
burn ::: v. t. --> To consume with fire; to reduce to ashes by the action of heat or fire; -- frequently intensified by up: as, to burn up wood.
To injure by fire or heat; to change destructively some property or properties of, by undue exposure to fire or heat; to scorch; to scald; to blister; to singe; to char; to sear; as, to burn steel in forging; to burn one&
buy ::: v. t. --> To acquire the ownership of (property) by giving an accepted price or consideration therefor, or by agreeing to do so; to acquire by the payment of a price or value; to purchase; -- opposed to sell.
To acquire or procure by something given or done in exchange, literally or figuratively; to get, at a cost or sacrifice; to buy pleasure with pain.
cadaster ::: n. --> An official statement of the quantity and value of real estate for the purpose of apportioning the taxes payable on such property.
cadastral ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to landed property.
candygrammar "language" A programming-language grammar that is mostly {syntactic sugar}; a play on "candygram". {COBOL}, {Apple Computer}'s {Hypertalk} language, and many {4GLs} share this property. The intent is to be as English-like as possible and thus easier for unskilled people to program. However, {syntax} isn't what makes programming hard; it's the mental effort and organisation required to specify an {algorithm} precisely. Thus "candygrammar" languages are just as difficult to program in, and far more painful for the experienced hacker. {GLS} notes: The overtones from the 1977 Chevy Chase "Jaws" parody on Saturday Night Live should not be overlooked. Someone lurking outside an apartment door tries to get the occupant to open up, while ominous music plays in the background. The last attempt is a half-hearted "Candygram!" When the door is opened, a shark bursts in and chomps the poor occupant. There is a moral here for those attracted to candygrammars. [{Jargon File}] (2004-09-23)
capital ::: 1. A town or city that is the official seat of government in a political entity, such as a state or nation. 2. Wealth in the form of money or property.
Capitalism: A mode of economic production which is characterized by the fact that the instruments of production (land, factories, raw materials, etc.) are controlled to a greater or lesser extent by private individuals or groups. Since the control an individual can exercise over means of production is never absolute and as a matter of fact fluctuates widely with the ever-changing natural and social environment, "capitalism" is a very loose term which covers a host of actually different economic systems. An implication of this basic notion of individual control is that the individual will control production in his own interests. The ideological counterpart to this fact is the concept of "profit," just as the ideological counterpart to the control itself is the myth of "private property" and "free enterprise." -- M.B.M.
capitalist ::: n. --> One who has capital; one who has money for investment, or money invested; esp. a person of large property, which is employed in business.
capitation ::: n. --> A numbering of heads or individuals.
A tax upon each head or person, without reference to property; a poll tax.
catel ::: n. --> Property; -- often used by Chaucer in contrast with rent, or income.
censor ::: n. --> One of two magistrates of Rome who took a register of the number and property of citizens, and who also exercised the office of inspector of morals and conduct.
One who is empowered to examine manuscripts before they are committed to the press, and to forbid their publication if they contain anything obnoxious; -- an official in some European countries.
One given to fault-finding; a censurer.
A critic; a reviewer.
centrifugence ::: n. --> The property or quality of being centrifugal.
century ::: n. --> A hundred; as, a century of sonnets; an aggregate of a hundred things.
A period of a hundred years; as, this event took place over two centuries ago.
A division of the Roman people formed according to their property, for the purpose of voting for civil officers.
One of sixty companies into which a legion of the army was divided. It was Commanded by a centurion.
cession ::: n. --> A yielding to physical force.
Concession; compliance.
A yielding, or surrender, as of property or rights, to another person; the act of ceding.
The giving up or vacating a benefice by accepting another without a proper dispensation.
The voluntary surrender of a person&
Chance: (Lat. cadere, to fall) 1. Property or being undetermined. 2. Property of being predictable according to the laws of probability (q.v.). -- A.C.B.
chaos "mathematics" A property of some {non-linear dynamic systems} which exhibit sensitive dependence on initial conditions. This means that there are initial states which evolve within some finite time to states whose separation in one or more dimensions of {state space} depends, in an average sense, exponentially on their initial separation. Such systems may still be completely {deterministic} in that any future state of the system depends only on the initial conditions and the equations describing the change of the system with time. It may, however, require arbitrarily high precision to actually calculate a future state to within some finite precision. ["On defining chaos", R. Glynn Holt "rgholt@voyager.jpl.nasa.gov" and D. Lynn Holt "lholt@seraph1.sewanee.edu". {(ftp://mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu/pub/etext/ippe/preprints/Phil_of_Science/Holt_and_Holt.On_Defining_Chaos)}] Fixed precision {floating-point} arithmetic, as used by most computers, may actually introduce chaotic dependence on initial conditions due to the accumulation of rounding errors (which constitutes a non-linear system). (1995-02-07)
characteristic ::: a. --> Pertaining to, or serving to constitute, the character; showing the character, or distinctive qualities or traits, of a person or thing; peculiar; distinctive. ::: n. --> A distinguishing trait, quality, or property; an element of character; that which characterized.
chattel ::: n. --> Any item of movable or immovable property except the freehold, or the things which are parcel of it. It is a more extensive term than goods or effects.
cheat ::: n. --> An act of deception or fraud; that which is the means of fraud or deception; a fraud; a trick; imposition; imposture.
One who cheats or deceives; an impostor; a deceiver; a cheater.
A troublesome grass, growing as a weed in grain fields; -- called also chess. See Chess.
The obtaining of property from another by an intentional active distortion of the truth.
Chrematistiscs: (Gr. chrematistike, the art of the use of money) A term insisted upon by Ingram (1823-1900) and others in a restricted sense to that portion of the science of political economy which relates to the management and regulation of wealth and property, one of the efforts to indicate more clearly the content of classical economics. -- H.H.
Church-Rosser Theorem "theory" A property of a {reduction} system that states that if an expression can be reduced by zero or more reduction steps to either expression M or expression N then there exists some other expression to which both M and N can be reduced. This implies that there is a unique {normal form} for any expression since M and N cannot be different normal forms because the theorem says they can be reduced to some other expression and normal forms are irreducible by definition. It does not imply that a normal form is reachable, only that if reduction terminates it will reach a unique normal form. (1995-01-25)
circumstance ::: n. --> That which attends, or relates to, or in some way affects, a fact or event; an attendant thing or state of things.
An event; a fact; a particular incident.
Circumlocution; detail.
Condition in regard to worldly estate; state of property; situation; surroundings. ::: v. t.
Coherence Theory of Truth: Theory of knowledge which maintains that truth is a property primarily applicable to any extensive body of consistent propositions, and derivatively applicable to any one proposition in such a system by virtue of its part in the system. -- A.C.B.
color ::: n. --> A property depending on the relations of light to the eye, by which individual and specific differences in the hues and tints of objects are apprehended in vision; as, gay colors; sad colors, etc.
Any hue distinguished from white or black.
The hue or color characteristic of good health and spirits; ruddy complexion.
That which is used to give color; a paint; a pigment; as, oil colors or water colors.
common ::: v. --> Belonging or relating equally, or similarly, to more than one; as, you and I have a common interest in the property.
Belonging to or shared by, affecting or serving, all the members of a class, considered together; general; public; as, properties common to all plants; the common schools; the Book of Common Prayer.
Often met with; usual; frequent; customary.
Not distinguished or exceptional; inconspicuous; ordinary;
communism ::: n. --> A scheme of equalizing the social conditions of life; specifically, a scheme which contemplates the abolition of inequalities in the possession of property, as by distributing all wealth equally to all, or by holding all wealth in common for the equal use and advantage of all.
compact 1. "theory" (Or "finite", "isolated") In {domain theory}, an element d of a {cpo} D is compact if and only if, for any {chain} S, a subset of D, d "= lub S =" there exists s in S such that d "= s. I.e. you always reach d (or better) after a finite number of steps up the chain. (""=" is written in {LaTeX} as {\sqsubseteq}). [{Jargon File}] (1995-01-13) 2. "jargon" Of a design, describes the valuable property that it can all be apprehended at once in one's head. This generally means the thing created from the design can be used with greater facility and fewer errors than an equivalent tool that is not compact. Compactness does not imply triviality or lack of power; for example, {C} is compact and {Fortran} is not, but C is more powerful than Fortran. Designs become non-compact through accreting {features} and {cruft} that don't merge cleanly into the overall design scheme (thus, some fans of {Classic C} maintain that {ANSI C} is no longer compact). (2008-10-13)
competency ::: n. --> The state of being competent; fitness; ability; adequacy; power.
Property or means sufficient for the necessaries and conveniences of life; sufficiency without excess.
Legal capacity or qualifications; fitness; as, the competency of a witness or of a evidence.
Right or authority; legal power or capacity to take cognizance of a cause; as, the competence of a judge or court.
complementary nondeterministic polynomial "complexity" (Co-NP) The set (or property) of problems with a yes/no answer where the complementary no/yes problem takes {nondeterministic polynomial time} ({NP}). For example, "Is n prime" is Co-NP and "Is n not prime" is NP, since it is only necessary to find one {factor} to prove that n is not {prime} whereas to prove that it is prime all possible factors must be eliminated. (2009-05-21)
Complex: (Lat. complecti, to entwine around, comprise) 1. Anything that possesses distinguishable parts, or the property of possessing distinguishable parts. 2. Anything that possesses distinguishable parts which are related in such a way as to give unity to the whole; or the property of having parts so related. -- A.C.B.
condensative ::: a. --> Having the property of condensing.
conditioned ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Condition ::: a. --> Surrounded; circumstanced; in a certain state or condition, as of property or health; as, a well conditioned man.
Having, or known under or by, conditions or relations; not independent; not absolute.
condition ::: n. --> Mode or state of being; state or situation with regard to external circumstances or influences, or to physical or mental integrity, health, strength, etc.; predicament; rank; position, estate.
Essential quality; property; attribute.
Temperament; disposition; character.
That which must exist as the occasion or concomitant of something else; that which is requisite in order that something else should take effect; an essential qualification; stipulation; terms
conductory ::: a. --> Having the property of conducting.
confiscation ::: n. --> The act or process of taking property or condemning it to be taken, as forfeited to the public use.
Conjunction: See Logic, formal, § 1. Connexity: A dyadic relation R is cilled connected if, for every two different members x, y of its field, at least one of xRy, yRx holds. Connotation: The sum of the constitutive notes of the essence of a concept as it is in itself and not as it is for us. This logical property is thus measured by the sum of the notes of the concept, of the higher genera it implies, of the various essential attributes of its nature as such. This term is synonymous with intension and comprehension; yet, the distinctions between them have been the object of controversies. J. S. Mill identifies connotation with signification and meaning, and includes in it much less than under comprehension or intension. The connotation of a general term (singular terms except descriptions are non-connotative) is the aggregate of all the other general terms necessarily implied by it is an abstract possibility and apart from exemplification in the actual world. It cannot be determined by denotation because necessity does not always refer to singular facts. Logicians who adopt this view distinguish connotation from comprehension by including in the latter contingent characters which do not enter in the former. Comprehension is thus the intensional reference of the concept, or the reference to universals of both general and singular terms. The determination of the comprehension of a concept is helped by its denotation, considering that reference is made also to singular, contingent, or particular objects exhibiting certain characteristics. In short, the connotation of a concept is its intensional reference determined intensionally; while its comprehension is its intensional reference extensionally determined. It may be observed that such a distinction and the view that the connotation of a concept contains only the notes which serve to define it, involves the nominalist principle that a concept may be reduced to what we are actually and explicitely thinking about the several notes we use to define it. Thus the connotation of a concept is much poorer than its actual content. Though the value of the concept seems to be saved by the recognition of its comprehension, it may be argued that the artificial introduction into the comprehension of both necessary and contingent notes, that is of actual and potential characteristics, confuses and perverts the notion of connotation as a logical property of our ideas. See Intension. -- T.G.
conquest ::: n. --> The act or process of conquering, or acquiring by force; the act of overcoming or subduing opposition by force, whether physical or moral; subjection; subjugation; victory.
That which is conquered; possession gained by force, physical or moral.
The acquiring of property by other means than by inheritance; acquisition.
The act of gaining or regaining by successful struggle;
consignment ::: n. --> The act of consigning; consignation.
The act of consigning or sending property to an agent or correspondent in another place, as for care, sale, etc.
That which is consigned; the goods or commodities sent or addressed to a consignee at one time or by one conveyance.
The writing by which anything is consigned.
contact ::: n. --> A close union or junction of bodies; a touching or meeting.
The property of two curves, or surfaces, which meet, and at the point of meeting have a common direction.
The plane between two adjacent bodies of dissimilar rock.
contractile ::: a. --> tending to contract; having the power or property of contracting, or of shrinking into shorter or smaller dimensions; as, the contractile tissues.
contractility ::: n. --> The quality or property by which bodies shrink or contract.
The power possessed by the fibers of living muscle of contracting or shortening.
contractive ::: a. --> Tending to contract; having the property or power or power of contracting.
conversion ::: n. --> The act of turning or changing from one state or condition to another, or the state of being changed; transmutation; change.
The act of changing one&
conveyancer ::: n. --> One whose business is to draw up conveyances of property, as deeds, mortgages, leases, etc.
conveyancing ::: n. --> The business of a conveyancer; the act or business of drawing deeds, leases, or other writings, for transferring the title to property from one person to another.
convey ::: v. t. --> To carry from one place to another; to bear or transport.
To cause to pass from one place or person to another; to serve as a medium in carrying (anything) from one place or person to another; to transmit; as, air conveys sound; words convey ideas.
To transfer or deliver to another; to make over, as property; more strictly (Law), to transfer (real estate) or pass (a title to real estate) by a sealed writing.
copyright "legal" The exclusive rights of the owner of the copyright on a work to make and distribute copies, prepare derivative works, and perform and display the work in public (these last two mainly apply to plays, films, dances and the like, but could also apply to software). A work, including a piece of software, is under copyright by default in most coutries, whether of not it displays a copyright notice. However, a copyright notice may make it easier to assert ownership. The copyright owner is the person or company whose name appears in the copyright notice on the box, or the disk or the screen or wherever. Most countries have agreed to uphold each others' copyrights. A copyright notice has three parts. The first can be either the {copyright symbol} (a letter C in a circle), the word "Copyright" or the abbreviation "Copr". Only the first of these is recognised internationally and the common {ASCII} rendering "(C)" is not valid anywhere. This is followed by the name of the copyright holder and the year of publication. The year should be the year of _first_ publication, it is not necessary as some believe to update this every year to the current year. Copyright protection in most countries extends for 50 years after the author's death. Originally, most of the computer industry assumed that only the program's underlying instructions were protected under copyright law but, beginning in the early 1980s, a series of lawsuits involving the video screens of game programs extended protections to the appearance of programs. Use of copyright to restrict redistribution is immoral, unethical and illegitimate. It is a result of brainwashing by monopolists and corporate interests and it violates everyone's rights. Such use of copyrights and patents hamper technological progress by making a naturally abundant resource scarce. Many, from communists to right wing libertarians, are trying to abolish intellectual property myths. See also {public domain}, {copyleft}, {software law}. {Universal Copyright Convention (http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/creativity/creative-industries/copyright/)}. {US Copyright Office (http://copyright.gov/)}. {Usenet} newsgroup: {news:misc.legal.computing}. [Is this definition correct in the UK? In the US? Anywhere?] (2014-01-08)
damage ::: n. --> Injury or harm to person, property, or reputation; an inflicted loss of value; detriment; hurt; mischief.
The estimated reparation in money for detriment or injury sustained; a compensation, recompense, or satisfaction to one party, for a wrong or injury actually done to him by another.
To ocassion damage to the soudness, goodness, or value of; to hurt; to injure; to impair.
damnum ::: n. --> Harm; detriment, either to character or property.
deadlock "parallel, programming" A situation where two or more {processes} are unable to proceed because each is waiting for one of the others to do something. A common example is a program waiting for output from a server while the server is waiting for more input from the controlling program before outputting anything. It is reported that this particular flavour of deadlock is sometimes called a "starvation deadlock", though the term "starvation" is more properly used for situations where a program can never run simply because it never gets high enough priority. Another common flavour is "constipation", in which each process is trying to send stuff to the other but all buffers are full because nobody is reading anything). See {deadly embrace}. Another example, common in {database} programming, is two processes that are sharing some resource (e.g. read access to a {table}) but then both decide to wait for exclusive (e.g. write) access. The term "deadly embrace" is mostly synonymous, though usually used only when exactly two processes are involved. This is the more popular term in Europe, while {deadlock} predominates in the United States. Compare: {livelock}. See also {safety property}, {liveness property}. [{Jargon File}] (2000-07-26)
decidability "mathematics" A property of sets for which one can determine whether something is a member or not in a {finite} number of computational steps. Decidability is an important concept in {computability theory}. A set (e.g. "all numbers with a 5 in them") is said to be "decidable" if I can write a program (usually for a {Turing Machine}) to determine whether a number is in the set and the program will always terminate with an answer YES or NO after a finite number of steps. Most sets you can describe easily are decidable, but there are infinitely many sets so most sets are undecidable, assuming any finite limit on the size (number of instructions or number of states) of our programs. I.e. how ever big you allow your program to be there will always be sets which need a bigger program to decide membership. One example of an undecidable set comes from the {halting problem}. It turns out that you can encode every program as a number: encode every symbol in the program as a number (001, 002, ...) and then string all the symbol codes together. Then you can create an undecidable set by defining it as the set of all numbers that represent a program that terminates in a finite number of steps. A set can also be "semi-decidable" - there is an {algorithm} that is guaranteed to return YES if the number is in the set, but if the number is not in the set, it may either return NO or run for ever. The {halting problem}'s set described above is semi-decidable. You decode the given number and run the resulting program. If it terminates the answer is YES. If it never terminates, then neither will the decision algorithm. (1995-01-13)
Deduction theorem: In a logistic system (q. v.) containing propositional calculus (pure or applied) or a suitable part of the propositional calculus, it is often desirable to have the property that if the inference from A to B is a valid inference then A ⊃ B is a theorem, or, more generally, that if the inference from A1, A2, . . . , An ⊃ B is valid then the inference from A1, A2, . . . , An ⊃ B is valid. The syntactical theorem, asserting of a given logistic system that it has this property, is called the deduction theorem for that system. (Certain cautions are necessary in defining the notion of valid inference where free variables are present; cf. Logic, formal, §§ 1, 3.) -- A.C.
defraud ::: v. t. --> To deprive of some right, interest, or property, by a deceitful device; to withhold from wrongfully; to injure by embezzlement; to cheat; to overreach; as, to defraud a servant, or a creditor, or the state; -- with of before the thing taken or withheld.
detriment ::: n. --> That which injures or causes damage; mischief; harm; diminution; loss; damage; -- used very generically; as, detriments to property, religion, morals, etc.
A charge made to students and barristers for incidental repairs of the rooms they occupy. ::: v. t.
dextro- ::: --> A prefix, from L. dexter, meaning, pertaining to, or toward, the right
having the property of turning the plane of polarized light to the right; as, dextrotartaric acid.
diathermaneity ::: n. --> The property of transmitting radiant heat; the quality of being diathermous.
diathermanous ::: a. --> Having the property of transmitting radiant heat; diathermal; -- opposed to athermanous.
dibasicity ::: n. --> The property or condition of being dibasic.
dichroic ::: a. --> Having the property of dichroism; as, a dichroic crystal.
dichroism ::: n. --> The property of presenting different colors by transmitted light, when viewed in two different directions, the colors being unlike in the direction of unlike or unequal axes.
dilapidation ::: n. --> The act of dilapidating, or the state of being dilapidated, reduced to decay, partially ruined, or squandered.
Ecclesiastical waste; impairing of church property by an incumbent, through neglect or by intention.
The pulling down of a building, or suffering it to fall or be in a state of decay.
dimension ::: 1. A property of space; extension in a given direction; extension in time. 2. Measurement in length, width and thickness; scope, importance. dimensions.
dimorphic ::: a. --> Having the property of dimorphism; dimorphous.
disinherit ::: v. t. --> To cut off from an inheritance or from hereditary succession; to prevent, as an heir, from coming into possession of any property or right, which, by law or custom, would devolve on him in the course of descent.
To deprive of heritage; to dispossess.
disponee ::: n. --> The person to whom any property is legally conveyed.
disponer ::: n. --> One who legally transfers property from himself to another.
disposal ::: n. --> The act of disposing, or disposing of, anything; arrangement; orderly distribution; a putting in order; as, the disposal of the troops in two lines.
Ordering; regulation; adjustment; management; government; direction.
Regulation of the fate, condition, application, etc., of anything; the transference of anything into new hands, a new place, condition, etc.; alienation, or parting; as, a disposal of property.
disposition ::: n. --> The act of disposing, arranging, ordering, regulating, or transferring; application; disposal; as, the disposition of a man&
disproperty ::: v. t. --> To cause to be no longer property; to dispossess of.
distraint ::: n. --> The act or proceeding of seizing personal property by distress.
diureticalness ::: n. --> The quality of being diuretical; diuretic property.
divestiture ::: n. --> The act of stripping, or depriving; the state of being divested; the deprivation, or surrender, of possession of property, rights, etc.
divisibility ::: n. --> The quality of being divisible; the property of bodies by which their parts are capable of separation.
Divisibility: The property in virtue of which a whole (whether physical, psychical or mathematical) may be divided into parts which do not thereby necessarily sever their relation with the whole. Divisibility usually implies not merely analysis or distinction of parts, but actual or potential resolution into parts. From the beginning philosophers have raised the question whether substances are infinitely or finitely divisible. Ancient materialism conceived of the physical atom as an indivisible substance. Descartes, however, and after him Leibniz, maintained the infinite divisibility of substance. The issue became the basis of Kant's cosmological antinomy (Crit. of pure Reason), from which he concluded that the issue was insoluble in metaphysical terms. In recent decades the question has had to take account of (1) researches in the physical atom, before which the older conception of physical substance has steadily retreated; and (2) the attempt to formulate a satisfactory definition of infinity (q.v.). -- O.F.K.
domain ::: n. --> Dominion; empire; authority.
The territory over which dominion or authority is exerted; the possessions of a sovereign or commonwealth, or the like. Also used figuratively.
Landed property; estate; especially, the land about the mansion house of a lord, and in his immediate occupancy; demesne.
Ownership of land; an estate or patrimony which one has in his own right; absolute proprietorship; paramount or sovereign
donatory ::: n. --> A donee of the crown; one the whom, upon certain condition, escheated property is made over.
dowager ::: n. --> A widow endowed, or having a jointure; a widow who either enjoys a dower from her deceased husband, or has property of her own brought by her to her husband on marriage, and settled on her after his decease.
A title given in England to a widow, to distinguish her from the wife of her husband&
dower ::: n. --> That with which one is gifted or endowed; endowment; gift.
The property with which a woman is endowed
That which a woman brings to a husband in marriage; dowry.
That portion of the real estate of a man which his widow enjoys during her life, or to which a woman is entitled after the death of her husband.
droitural ::: a. --> relating to the mere right of property, as distinguished from the right of possession; as, droitural actions.
ductility ::: n. --> The property of a metal which allows it to be drawn into wires or filaments.
Tractableness; pliableness.
due ::: a. --> Owed, as a debt; that ought to be paid or done to or for another; payable; owing and demandable.
Justly claimed as a right or property; proper; suitable; becoming; appropriate; fit.
Such as (a thing) ought to be; fulfilling obligation; proper; lawful; regular; appointed; sufficient; exact; as, due process of law; due service; in due time.
Appointed or required to arrive at a given time; as, the
dynamic binding The property of {object-oriented programming} languages where the code executed to perform a given operation is determined at {run time} from the {class} of the operand(s) (the receiver of the message). There may be several different classes of objects which can receive a given message. An expression may denote an object which may have more than one possible class and that class can only be determined at run time. New classes may be created that can receive a particular message, without changing (or recompiling) the code which sends the message. An class may be created that can receive any set of existing messages. {C++} implements dynamic binding using "{virtual member functions}". One important reason for having dynamic binding is that it provides a mechanism for selecting between alternatives which is arguably more robust than explicit selection by conditionals or {pattern matching}. When a new {subclass} is added, or an existing subclass changes, the necessary modifications are localised: you don't have incomplete conditionals and broken patterns scattered all over the program. See {overloading}.
dynamiter ::: n. --> One who uses dynamite; esp., one who uses it for the destruction of life and property.
ejectment ::: n. --> A casting out; a dispossession; an expulsion; ejection; as, the ejectment of tenants from their homes.
A species of mixed action, which lies for the recovery of possession of real property, and damages and costs for the wrongful withholding of it.
elastic ::: a. --> Springing back; having a power or inherent property of returning to the form from which a substance is bent, drawn, pressed, or twisted; springy; having the power of rebounding; as, a bow is elastic; the air is elastic; India rubber is elastic.
Able to return quickly to a former state or condition, after being depressed or overtaxed; having power to recover easily from shocks and trials; as, elastic spirits; an elastic constitution.
elasticity ::: n. --> The quality of being elastic; the inherent property in bodies by which they recover their former figure or dimensions, after the removal of external pressure or altering force; springiness; tendency to rebound; as, the elasticity of caoutchouc; the elasticity of the air.
Power of resistance to, or recovery from, depression or overwork.
electro-negative ::: a. --> Having the property of being attracted by an electro-positive body, or a tendency to pass to the positive pole in electrolysis, by the law that opposite electricities attract each other.
Negative; nonmetallic; acid; -- opposed to positive, metallic, or basic. ::: n.
Elements ::: The elementary state of material Force is, in the view of the old Indian physicists, a condition of pure material extension in Space of which the peculiar property is vibration typified to us by the phenomenon of sound. But vibration in this state of ether is not sufficient to create forms. There must first be some obstruction in the flow of the Force ocean, some contraction and expansion, some interplay of vibrations, some impinging of force upon force so as to create a beginning of fixed relations and mutual effects. Material Force modifying its first ethereal status assumes a second, called in the old language the aerial, of which the special property is contact between force and force, contact that is the basis of all material relations. Still we have not as yet real forms but only varying forces. A sustaining principle is needed. This is provided by a third self-modification of the primitive Force of which the principle of light, electricity, fire and heat is for us the characteristic manifestation. Even then, we can have forms of force preserving their own character and peculiar action, but not stable forms of Matter. A fourth state characterised by diffusion and a first medium of permanent attractions and repulsions, termed picturesquely water or the liquid state, and a fifth of cohesion, termed earth or the solid state, complete the necessary elements.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 87-88
embezzlement ::: n. --> The fraudulent appropriation of property by a person to whom it has been intrusted; as, the embezzlement by a clerk of his employer&
embezzle ::: v. t. --> To appropriate fraudulently to one&
emphyteusis ::: n. --> A real right, susceptible of assignment and of descent, charged on productive real estate, the right being coupled with the enjoyment of the property on condition of taking care of the estate and paying taxes, and sometimes a small rent.
endowment ::: n. --> The act of bestowing a dower, fund, or permanent provision for support.
That which is bestowed or settled on a person or an institution; property, fund, or revenue permanently appropriated to any object; as, the endowment of a church, a hospital, or a college.
That which is given or bestowed upon the person or mind; gift of nature; accomplishment; natural capacity; talents; -- usually in the plural.
Engels, Frederick: Co-founder of the doctrines of Marxism (see Dialectical materialism) Engels was the life-long friend and collaborator of Karl Marx (q.v.). He was born at Barmen, Germanv, in 1820, the son of a manufacturer. Like Marx, he became interested in communism early in life, developing and applying its doctrines until his death, August 5, 1895. Beside his collaboration with Marx on Die Heilige Familie, Die Deutsche Ideologie, Manifesto of the Communist Party, Anti-Dühring and articles for the "New York Tribune" (a selection from which constitutes "Germany: revolution and counter-revolution"), and his editing of Volumes II and III of Capital, published after Marx's death, Engels wrote extensively on various subjects, from "Condition of the Working Class in England (1844)" to military problems, in which field he had received technical training. On the philosophical side of Marxism, Engels speculated on fundamental questions of scientific methodology and dialectical logic in such books as Dialectics of Nature and Anti-Dühring. Works like Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome of Classical German Philosophy and Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State are likewise regarded as basic texts. The most extensive collection of Engels' works will be found in Marx-Engels "Gesamtausgabe", to which there is still much unpublished material to be added. -- J.M.S.
Engels, Friedrich: Anti-Dühring. Dialectics of Nature. Ludwig Feuerback and the Outcome of Classical German Philosophy. Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.
entrance ::: n. --> The act of entering or going into; ingress; as, the entrance of a person into a house or an apartment; hence, the act of taking possession, as of property, or of office; as, the entrance of an heir upon his inheritance, or of a magistrate into office.
Liberty, power, or permission to enter; as, to give entrance to friends.
The passage, door, or gate, for entering.
The entering upon; the beginning, or that with which the
entropy ::: n. --> A certain property of a body, expressed as a measurable quantity, such that when there is no communication of heat the quantity remains constant, but when heat enters or leaves the body the quantity increases or diminishes. If a small amount, h, of heat enters the body when its temperature is t in the thermodynamic scale the entropy of the body is increased by h / t. The entropy is regarded as measured from some standard temperature and pressure. Sometimes called the thermodynamic function.
equitableness ::: n. --> The quality of being equitable, just, or impartial; as, the equitableness of a judge, a decision, or distribution of property.
escheat ::: n. --> The falling back or reversion of lands, by some casualty or accident, to the lord of the fee, in consequence of the extinction of the blood of the tenant, which may happen by his dying without heirs, and formerly might happen by corruption of blood, that is, by reason of a felony or attainder.
The reverting of real property to the State, as original and ultimate proprietor, by reason of a failure of persons legally entitled to hold the same.
estate ::: 1. The situation or circumstances of one"s life. 2. Social position or rank, especially of high order. 3. A person"s total possessions (property, money etc.). 4. A landed property, usually, of considerable size. estates.
estate ::: n. --> Settled condition or form of existence; state; condition or circumstances of life or of any person; situation.
Social standing or rank; quality; dignity.
A person of high rank.
A property which a person possesses; a fortune; possessions, esp. property in land; also, property of all kinds which a person leaves to be divided at his death.
The state; the general body politic; the common-wealth; the
exaltation ::: n. --> The act of exalting or raising high; also, the state of being exalted; elevation.
The refinement or subtilization of a body, or the increasing of its virtue or principal property.
That place of a planet in the zodiac in which it was supposed to exert its strongest influence.
excitability ::: n. --> The quality of being readily excited; proneness to be affected by exciting causes.
The property manifested by living organisms, and the elements and tissues of which they are constituted, of responding to the action of stimulants; irritability; as, nervous excitability.
expectation ::: n. --> The act or state of expecting or looking forward to an event as about to happen.
That which is expected or looked for.
The prospect of the future; grounds upon which something excellent is expected to happen; prospect of anything good to come, esp. of property or rank.
The value of any chance (as the prospect of prize or property) which depends upon some contingent event. Expectations are
exponential-time "complexity" The set or property of problems which can be solved by an {exponential-time algorithm} but for which no {polynomial-time algorithm} is known. (1995-04-27)
expropriation ::: n. --> The act of expropriating; the surrender of a claim to exclusive property; the act of depriving of ownership or proprietary rights.
extension ::: v. t. --> The act of extending or the state of being extended; a stretching out; enlargement in breadth or continuation of length; increase; augmentation; expansion.
That property of a body by which it occupies a portion of space.
Capacity of a concept or general term to include a greater or smaller number of objects; -- correlative of intension.
The operation of stretching a broken bone so as to
extradotal ::: a. --> Forming no part of the dowry; as, extradotal property.
factorize ::: v. t. --> To give warning to; -- said of a person in whose hands the effects of another are attached, the warning being to the effect that he shall not pay the money or deliver the property of the defendant in his hands to him, but appear and answer the suit of the plaintiff.
To attach (the effects of a debtor) in the hands of a third person ; to garnish. See Garnish.
feature "jargon" 1. A good property or behaviour (as of a program). Whether it was intended or not is immaterial. 2. An intended property or behaviour (as of a program). Whether it is good or not is immaterial (but if bad, it is also a {misfeature}). 3. A surprising property or behaviour; in particular, one that is purposely inconsistent because it works better that way - such an inconsistency is therefore a {feature} and not a {bug}. This kind of feature is sometimes called a {miswart}. 4. A property or behaviour that is gratuitous or unnecessary, though perhaps also impressive or cute. For example, one feature of {Common LISP}'s "format" function is the ability to print numbers in two different Roman-numeral formats (see {bells, whistles, and gongs}). 5. A property or behaviour that was put in to help someone else but that happens to be in your way. 6. A bug that has been documented. To call something a feature sometimes means the author of the program did not consider the particular case, and that the program responded in a way that was unexpected but not strictly incorrect. A standard joke is that a bug can be turned into a {feature} simply by documenting it (then theoretically no one can complain about it because it's in the manual), or even by simply declaring it to be good. "That's not a bug, that's a feature!" is a common catch-phrase. Apparently there is a Volkswagen Beetle in San Francisco whose license plate reads "FEATURE". See also {feetch feetch}, {creeping featurism}, {wart}, {green lightning}. The relationship among bugs, features, misfeatures, warts and miswarts might be clarified by the following hypothetical exchange between two hackers on an airliner: A: "This seat doesn't recline." B: "That's not a bug, that's a feature. There is an emergency exit door built around the window behind you, and the route has to be kept clear." A: "Oh. Then it's a misfeature; they should have increased the spacing between rows here." B: "Yes. But if they'd increased spacing in only one section it would have been a wart - they would've had to make nonstandard-length ceiling panels to fit over the displaced seats." A: "A miswart, actually. If they increased spacing throughout they'd lose several rows and a chunk out of the profit margin. So unequal spacing would actually be the Right Thing." B: "Indeed." "Undocumented feature" is a common euphemism for a {bug}. 7. An attribute or function of a {class} in {Eiffel}. [{Jargon File}] (1995-10-22)
Federation Against Software Theft Limited "body, legal" (FAST) A non-profitmaking organisation, formed in 1984 by the software industry with the aim of eradicating {software theft} in the UK. FAST was the world's first anti-piracy organisation to work to protect the intellectual property rights of software publishers. Initially concentrating on lobbying parliament to revise Copyright law, FAST also prosecutes organisations and individuals for software theft on behalf of its members and publicises the legal penalties and security risks. FAST Corporate Services Limited runs the FAST Standard for Software Compliance (FSSC-1:2004). This was developed in collaboration with the {British Standards Institution} as an independent standard of excellence in {software compliance}. In 1995 FAST proposed to merge with the {Business Software Alliance} created by {Microsoft} and which has a world-wide influence. However, the talks fell through and in 1996, {Novell} and {Adobe Systems, Inc.} defected to BSA. {FAST Home (http://fast.org.uk/)}. E-mail: "fast@fast.org". Address: York House, 18 York Road, Maidenhead, Berkshire SL6 1SF. Telephone: +44 (1628) 622 121 (2005-12-27)
fee ::: n. --> property; possession; tenure.
Reward or compensation for services rendered or to be rendered; especially, payment for professional services, of optional amount, or fixed by custom or laws; charge; pay; perquisite; as, the fees of lawyers and physicians; the fees of office; clerk&
ferae naturae ::: --> Of a wild nature; -- applied to animals, as foxes, wild ducks, etc., in which no one can claim property.
fiar ::: n. --> One in whom the property of an estate is vested, subject to the estate of a life renter.
The price of grain, as legally fixed, in the counties of Scotland, for the current year.
field ::: 1. A wide unbroken expanse, as of ice. 2. An area or sphere of activity. 3. A broad, level, open expanse of land; a stretch of open land, esp. one used for pasture or tillage; a plain. 4. The surface on which something is portrayed or enacted. An area of human activity or interest. 5. A piece of ground devoted to sports or contests; playing field. 6. A region of space characterized by a physical property, such as gravitational or electromagnetic force or fluid pressure. fields, field-paths, star-field, time-field, play-fields, race-fields.
fluorescence ::: n. --> That property which some transparent bodies have of producing at their surface, or within their substance, light different in color from the mass of the material, as when green crystals of fluor spar afford blue reflections. It is due not to the difference in the color of a distinct surface layer, but to the power which the substance has of modifying the light incident upon it. The light emitted by fluorescent substances is in general of lower refrangibility than the incident light.
fluorescent ::: a. --> Having the property of fluorescence.
forwarding ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Forward ::: n. --> The act of one who forwards; the act or occupation of transmitting merchandise or other property for others.
The process of putting a book into its cover, and making it ready for the finisher.
fragmentariness ::: n. --> The quality or property of being in fragnebts, or broken pieces, incompleteness; want of continuity.
freehold ::: n. --> An estate in real property, of inheritance (in fee simple or fee tail) or for life; or the tenure by which such estate is held.
Free Software Foundation "body" (FSF) An organisation devoted to the creation and dissemination of {free software}, i.e. software that is free from licensing fees or restrictions on use. The Foundation's main work is supporting the {GNU} project, started by {Richard Stallman} (RMS), partly to proselytise for his position that information is community property and all software source should be shared. The GNU project has developed the GNU {Emacs} editor and a {C} compiler, {gcc}, replacements for many Unix utilities and many other tools. A complete {Unix}-like operating system ({HURD}) is in the works (April 1994). Software is distributed under the terms of the {GNU General Public License}, which also provides a good summary of the Foundation's goals and principles. The Free Software Foundation raises most of its funds from distributing its software, although it is a charity rather than a company. Although the software is freely available (e.g. by {FTP} - see below) users are encouraged to support the work of the FSF by paying for their distribution service or by making donations. One of the slogans of the FSF is "Help stamp out software hoarding!" This remains controversial because authors want to own, assign and sell the results of their labour. However, many hackers who disagree with RMS have nevertheless cooperated to produce large amounts of high-quality software for free redistribution under the Free Software Foundation's imprimatur. See {copyleft}, {General Public Virus}, {GNU archive site}. {(ftp://ftp.gnu.ai.mit.edu)}. Unofficial WWW pages: {PDX (http://cs.pdx.edu/~trent/gnu/)}, {DeLorie (http://delorie.com/gnu/)}. E-mail: "gnu@gnu.org". Address: Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. Telephone: +1 (617) 876 3296. (1995-12-10)
Frege, (Friedrich Ludwig) Gottlob, 1848-1925, German mathematician and logician. Professor of mathematics at the University of Jena, 1879-1918. Largely unknown to, or misunderstood by, his contemporaries, he is now regarded by many as "beyond question the greatest logician of the Nineteenth Century" (quotation from Tarski). He must be regarded -- after Boole (q. v.) -- as the second founder of symbolic logic, the essential steps in the passage from the algebra of logic to the logistic method (see the article Logistic system) having been taken in his Begriffsschrift of 1879. In this work there appear tor the first time the propositional calculus in substantially its modern form, the notion of propositional function, the use of quantifiers, the explicit statement of primitive rules of inference, the notion of an hereditary property and the logical analysis of proof by mathematical induction or recursion (q. v.). This last is perhaps the most important element in the definition of an inductive cardinal number (q.v.) and provided the basis for Frege's derivation of arithmetic from logic in his Grundlagen der Anthmetik (1884) and Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, vol. 1 (1893), and vol. 2 (1903). The first volume of Grundgesetze der Arithmetik is the culmination of Frege's work, and we find here many important further ideas. In particular, there is a careful distinction between using a formula to express something else and naming a formula in order to make a syntactical statement about it, quotation marks being used in order to distinguish the name of a formula from the formula itself. In an appendix to the second volume of Grundgesetze , Frege acknowledges the presence of an inconsistency in his system through what is now known as the Russel paradox (see Paradoxes , logical), as had been called to his attention by Russell when the book was nearly through the press. -- A.C.
frequencies ::: the property or condition of occurring at frequent intervals.
fuzzy logic A superset of {Boolean logic} dealing with the concept of partial truth -- {truth values} between "completely true" and "completely false". It was introduced by Dr. Lotfi Zadeh of {UCB} in the 1960's as a means to model the uncertainty of {natural language}. Any specific theory may be generalised from a discrete (or "crisp") form to a continuous (fuzzy) form, e.g. "fuzzy calculus", "fuzzy differential equations" etc. Fuzzy logic replaces Boolean truth values with degrees of truth which are very similar to probabilities except that they need not sum to one. Instead of an assertion pred(X), meaning that X definitely has the property associated with {predicate} "pred", we have a truth function truth(pred(X)) which gives the degree of truth that X has that property. We can combine such values using the standard definitions of fuzzy logic: truth(not x) = 1.0 - truth(x) truth(x and y) = minimum (truth(x), truth(y)) truth(x or y) = maximum (truth(x), truth(y)) (There are other possible definitions for "and" and "or", e.g. using sum and product). If truth values are restricted to 0 and 1 then these functions behave just like their Boolean counterparts. This is known as the "extension principle". Just as a Boolean predicate asserts that its argument definitely belongs to some subset of all objects, a fuzzy predicate gives the degree of truth with which its argument belongs to a {fuzzy subset}. {Usenet} newsgroup: {news:comp.ai.fuzzy}. E-mail servers: "fuzzynet@aptronix.com", "rnalib@its.bldrdoc.gov", "fuzzy-server@til.com". {(ftp://ftp.hiof.no/pub/Fuzzy)}, {(ftp://ntia.its.bldrdoc.gov/pub/fuzzy)}. {FAQ (ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-group/comp.answers/fuzzy-logic)}. {James Brule, "Fuzzy systems - a tutorial", 1985 (http://life.anu.edu.au/complex_systems/fuzzy.html)}. {STB Software Catalog (http://krakatoa.jsc.nasa.gov/stb/catalog.html)}, includes a few fuzzy tools. [H.J. Zimmerman, "Fuzzy Sets, Decision Making and Expert Systems", Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1987]. ["Fuzzy Logic, State of the Art", Ed. R. Lowen, Marc Roubens, Theory and Decision Library, D: System theory, Knowledge Engineering and Problem Solving 12, Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1993, ISBN 0-7923-2324-6]. (1995-02-21)
garnishee ::: n. --> One who is garnished; a person upon whom garnishment has been served in a suit by a creditor against a debtor, such person holding property belonging to the debtor, or owing him money. ::: v. t. --> To make (a person) a garnishee; to warn by garnishment; to garnish.
gas ::: 1. A substance in the gaseous state. 2. Physics. A substance possessing perfect molecular mobility and the property of indefinite expansion, as opposed to a solid or liquid.
gear ::: n. --> Clothing; garments; ornaments.
Goods; property; household stuff.
Whatever is prepared for use or wear; manufactured stuff or material.
The harness of horses or cattle; trapping.
Warlike accouterments.
Manner; custom; behavior.
Business matters; affairs; concern.
George Boole "person" 1815-11-02 - 2008-05-11 22:58 best known for his contribution to symbolic logic ({Boolean Algebra}) but also active in other fields such as probability theory, {algebra}, analysis, and differential equations. He lived, taught, and is buried in Cork City, Ireland. The Boole library at University College Cork is named after him. For centuries philosophers have studied logic, which is orderly and precise reasoning. George Boole argued in 1847 that logic should be allied with mathematics rather than with philosophy. Demonstrating logical principles with mathematical symbols instead of words, he founded {symbolic logic}, a field of mathematical/philosophical study. In the new discipline he developed, known as {Boolean algebra}, all objects are divided into separate classes, each with a given property; each class may be described in terms of the presence or absence of the same property. An electrical circuit, for example, is either on or off. Boolean algebra has been applied in the design of {binary} computer circuits and telephone switching equipment. These devices make use of Boole's two-valued (presence or absence of a property) system. Born in Lincoln, Lincolnshire, UK, George Boole was the son of a tradesman and was largely self-taught. He began teaching at the age of 16 to help support his family. In his spare time he read mathematical journals and soon began to write articles for them. By the age of 29, Boole had received a gold medal for his work from the British Royal Society. His 'Mathematical Analysis of Logic', a pamphlet published in 1847, contained his first statement of the principles of symbolic logic. Two years later he was appointed professor of mathematics at Queen's College in Ireland, even though he had never studied at a university. He died in Ballintemple, Ireland, on 1864-12-08. {Compton's Encyclopedia Online (http://comptons2.aol.com/encyclopedia/ARTICLES/00619_A.html)}. (1998-11-19)
give ::: n. --> To bestow without receiving a return; to confer without compensation; to impart, as a possession; to grant, as authority or permission; to yield up or allow.
To yield possesion of; to deliver over, as property, in exchange for something; to pay; as, we give the value of what we buy.
To yield; to furnish; to produce; to emit; as, flint and steel give sparks.
To communicate or announce, as advice, tidings, etc.; to
Gray code "hardware" A {binary} sequence with the property that only one {bit} changes between any two consecutive elements (the two codes have a {Hamming distance} of one). The Gray code originated when {digital logic} circuits were built from {vacuum tubes} and electromechanical {relays}. Counters generated tremendous power demands and noise spikes when many bits changed at once. E.g. when incrementing a register containing 11111111, the {back-EMF} from the relays' collapsing magnetic fields required copious noise suppression. Using Gray code counters, any increment or decrement changed only one bit, regardless of the size of the number. Gray code can also be used to convert the angular position of a disk to digital form. A radial line of sensors reads the code off the surface of the disk and if the disk is half-way between two positions each sensor might read its bit from both positions at once but since only one bit differs between the two, the value read is guaranteed to be one of the two valid values rather than some third (invalid) combination (a {glitch}). One possible {algorithm} for generating a Gray code sequence is to toggle the lowest numbered bit that results in a new code each time. Here is a four bit Gray code sequence generated in this way: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 The codes were patented in 1953 by Frank Gray, a {Bell Labs} researcher. {(http://nist.gov/dads/HTML/graycode.html)}. (2002-08-29)
guardian ::: v. t. --> One who guards, preserves, or secures; one to whom any person or thing is committed for protection, security, or preservation from injury; a warden.
One who has, or is entitled to, the custody of the person or property of an infant, a minor without living parents, or a person incapable of managing his own affairs. ::: a.
guna ::: 1. quality, character, property. ::: 2. the three gunas: the three modes of nature: sattva, rajas, tamas. ::: 3. [in Sanskrit grammar]: vowel modification.
guna. ::: fundamental operating principle or quality; mode of nature; attribute; property
gun.a ::: quality, property, feature; any of "the numberless and infinite guna qualities" (anantagun.a) of the sagun.a brahman "into which all the cosmic action can be resolved"; the quality which the isvara "perceives in each different object of experience (vishaya) and for the enjoyment of which He creates it in the lila"; any of the three modes (trigun.a) of the energy of the lower Nature (apara prakr.ti), called sattva, rajas and tamas, which in the transition to the higher Nature (para prakr.ti) are transformed into pure prakasa, tapas (or pravr.tti) and sama.
harmonite ::: n. --> One of a religious sect, founded in Wurtemburg in the last century, composed of followers of George Rapp, a weaver. They had all their property in common. In 1803, a portion of this sect settled in Pennsylvania and called the village thus established, Harmony.
heirloom ::: n. --> Any furniture, movable, or personal chattel, which by law or special custom descends to the heir along with the inheritance; any piece of personal property that has been in a family for several generations.
heir ::: n. --> One who inherits, or is entitled to succeed to the possession of, any property after the death of its owner; one on whom the law bestows the title or property of another at the death of the latter.
One who receives any endowment from an ancestor or relation; as, the heir of one&
hemihedrism ::: n. --> The property of crystallizing hemihedrally.
Hence in its widest sense Scholasticism embraces all the intellectual activities, artistic, philosophical and theological, carried on in the medieval schools. Any attempt to define its narrower meaning in the field of philosophy raises serious difficulties, for in this case, though the term's comprehension is lessened, it still has to cover many centuries of many-faced thought. However, it is still possible to list several characteristics sufficient to differentiate Scholastic from non-Scholastic philosophy. While ancient philosophy was the philosophy of a people and modern thought that of individuals, Scholasticism was the philosophy of a Christian society which transcended the characteristics of individuals, nations and peoples. It was the corporate product of social thought, and as such its reasoning respected authority in the forms of tradition and revealed religion. Tradition consisted primarily in the systems of Plato and Aristotle as sifted, adapted and absorbed through many centuries. It was natural that religion, which played a paramount role in the culture of the middle ages, should bring influence to bear on the medieval, rational view of life. Revelation was held to be at once a norm and an aid to reason. Since the philosophers of the period were primarily scientific theologians, their rational interests were dominated by religious preoccupations. Hence, while in general they preserved the formal distinctions between reason and faith, and maintained the relatively autonomous character of philosophy, the choice of problems and the resources of science were controlled by theology. The most constant characteristic of Scholasticism was its method. This was formed naturally by a series of historical circumstances, The need of a medium of communication, of a consistent body of technical language tooled to convey the recently revealed meanings of religion, God, man and the material universe led the early Christian thinkers to adopt the means most viable, most widely extant, and nearest at hand, viz. Greek scientific terminology. This, at first purely utilitarian, employment of Greek thought soon developed under Justin, Clement of Alexandria, Origin, and St. Augustine into the "Egyptian-spoils" theory; Greek thought and secular learning were held to be propaedeutic to Christianity on the principle: "Whatever things were rightly said among all men are the property of us Christians." (Justin, Second Apology, ch. XIII). Thus was established the first characteristic of the Scholastic method: philosophy is directly and immediately subordinate to theology. Because of this subordinate position of philosophy and because of the sacred, exclusive and total nature of revealed wisdom, the interest of early Christian thinkers was focused much more on the form of Greek thought than on its content and, it might be added, much less of this content was absorbed by early Christian thought than is generally supposed. As practical consequences of this specialized interest there followed two important factors in the formation of Scholastic philosophy: Greek logic en bloc was taken over by Christians; from the beginning of the Christian era to the end of the XII century, no provision was made in Catholic centers of learning for the formal teaching of philosophy. There was a faculty to teach logic as part of the trivium and a faculty of theology. For these two reasons, what philosophy there was during this long period of twelve centuries, was dominated first, as has been seen, by theology and, second, by logic. In this latter point is found rooted the second characteristic of the Scholastic method: its preoccupation with logic, deduction, system, and its literary form of syllogistic argumentation. The third characteristic of the Scholastic method follows directly from the previous elements already indicated. It adds, however, a property of its own gained from the fact that philosophy during the medieval period became an important instrument of pedogogy. It existed in and for the schools. This new element coupled with the domination of logic, the tradition-mindedness and social-consciousness of the medieval Christians, produced opposition of authorities for or against a given problem and, finally, disputation, where a given doctrine is syllogistically defended against the adversaries' objections. This third element of the Scholastic method is its most original characteristic and accounts more than any other single factor for the forms of the works left us from this period. These are to be found as commentaries on single or collected texts; summae, where the method is dialectical or disputational in character. The main sources of Greek thought are relatively few in number: all that was known of Plato was the Timaeus in the translation and commentary of Chalcidius. Augustine, the pseudo-Areopagite, and the Liber de Causis were the principal fonts of Neoplatonic literature. Parts of Aristotle's logical works (Categoriae and de Interpre.) and the Isagoge of Porphyry were known through the translations of Boethius. Not until 1128 did the Scholastics come to know the rest of Aristotle's logical works. The golden age of Scholasticism was heralded in the late XIIth century by the translations of the rest of his works (Physics, Ethics, Metaphysics, De Anima, etc.) from the Arabic by Gerard of Cremona, John of Spain, Gundisalvi, Michael Scot, and Hermann the German, from the Greek by Robert Grosseteste, William of Moerbeke, and Henry of Brabant. At the same time the Judae-Arabian speculation of Alkindi, Alfarabi, Avencebrol, Avicenna, Averroes, and Maimonides together with the Neoplatonic works of Proclus were made available in translation. At this same period the Scholastic attention to logic was turned to metaphysics, even psychological and ethical problems and the long-discussed question of the universals were approached from this new angle. Philosophy at last achieved a certain degree of autonomy and slowly forced the recently founded universities to accord it a separate faculty.
hereditament ::: n. --> Any species of property that may be inherited; lands, tenements, anything corporeal or incorporeal, real, personal, or mixed, that may descend to an heir.
Hereditary property: See Recursion, proof by. Hermeneutics: The art and science of interpreting especially authoritative writings, mainly in application to sacred scripture, and equivalent to exegesis. -- K.F.L.
Hilbert and Ackermann use the word predicate for a propositional function of one or more variables, Carnap uses it for the corresponding syntactical entity, the name or designation of such a propositional function (i.e., of a property or relation). -- A.C.
homographic ::: a. --> Employing a single and separate character to represent each sound; -- said of certain methods of spelling words.
Possessing the property of homography.
hotchpotch ::: n. --> A mingled mass; a confused mixture; a stew of various ingredients; a hodgepodge.
A blending of property for equality of division, as when lands given in frank-marriage to one daughter were, after the death of the ancestor, blended with the lands descending to her and to her sisters from the same ancestor, and then divided in equal portions among all the daughters. In modern usage, a mixing together, or throwing into a common mass or stock, of the estate left by a person
hoveler ::: n. --> One who assists in saving life and property from a wreck; a coast boatman.
Huffman coding "algorithm" A {data compression} technique which varies the length of the encoded symbol in proportion to its information content, that is the more often a symbol or token is used, the shorter the {binary string} used to represent it in the compressed stream. Huffman codes can be properly decoded because they obey the prefix property, which means that no code can be a prefix of another code, and so the complete set of codes can be represented as a binary tree, known as a Huffman tree. Huffman coding was first described in a seminal paper by D.A. Huffman in 1952. (1994-12-23)
hygroscopic ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to, or indicated by, the hygroscope; not readily manifest to the senses, but capable of detection by the hygroscope; as, glass is often covered with a film of hygroscopic moisture.
Having the property of readily inbibing moisture from the atmosphere, or of the becoming coated with a thin film of moisture, as glass, etc.
hygroscopicity ::: n. --> The property possessed by vegetable tissues of absorbing or discharging moisture according to circumstances.
Hylotheism: (Gr. hyle matter, and theism q.v.). A synonym for either pantheism or materialism in that this doctrine identifies mattei and god, or has the one merge into the other. -- K.F.L Hylozoism: (Gr. hyle, mattei -- zoe, life) The doctrine that life is a property of matter, that matter and life are inseparable, that life is derived from matter, or that matter has spiritual properties. The conception of nature as alive or animated, of reality as alive. The original substance as bearing within itself the cause of all motion and change. The early Greek cosmologists of the Milesian school made statements which implied a belief in life for their primary substances. For Straton of Lampsacus each of the ultimate particles of matter possesses life. For the Stoics the universe as a whole is alive. For Spinoza different kinds of things possess life in different grades. -- J.K F.
hyperboloid ::: n. --> A surface of the second order, which is cut by certain planes in hyperbolas; also, the solid, bounded in part by such a surface. ::: a. --> Having some property that belongs to an hyperboloid or hyperbola.
hypotheca ::: n. --> An obligation by which property of a debtor was made over to his creditor in security of his debt.
hypothecate ::: v. t. --> To subject, as property, to liability for a debt or engagement without delivery of possession or transfer of title; to pledge without delivery of possession; to mortgage, as ships, or other personal property; to make a contract by bottomry. See Hypothecation, Bottomry.
hypothecation ::: n. --> The act or contract by which property is hypothecated; a right which a creditor has in or to the property of his debtor, in virtue of which he may cause it to be sold and the price appropriated in payment of his debt. This is a right in the thing, or jus in re.
A contract whereby, in consideration of money advanced for the necessities of the ship, the vessel, freight, or cargo is made liable for its repayment, provided the ship arrives in safety.
identify ::: v. t. --> To make to be the same; to unite or combine in such a manner as to make one; to treat as being one or having the same purpose or effect; to consider as the same in any relation.
To establish the identity of; to prove to be the same with something described, claimed, or asserted; as, to identify stolen property. ::: v. i.
If "S" occurs fictitiously it is customary to say that S is a fictitious entity or a fiction. (The language is unfortunate as falsely suggesting that in such case there is a special kind of entity denoted by S and having the property of being fictitious.)
impenetrability ::: n. --> Quality of being impenetrable.
That property in virtue of which two portions of matter can not at the same time occupy the same portion of space.
Insusceptibility of intellectual or emotional impression; obtuseness; stupidity; coldness.
impenetrable ::: a. --> Incapable of being penetrated or pierced; not admitting the passage of other bodies; not to be entered; impervious; as, an impenetrable shield.
Having the property of preventing any other substance from occupying the same space at the same time.
Inaccessible, as to knowledge, reason, sympathy, etc.; unimpressible; not to be moved by arguments or motives; as, an impenetrable mind, or heart.
impetus ::: n. --> A property possessed by a moving body in virtue of its weight and its motion; the force with which any body is driven or impelled; momentum.
Fig.: Impulse; incentive; vigor; force.
The aititude through which a heavy body must fall to acquire a velocity equal to that with which a ball is discharged from a piece.
improperty ::: n. --> Impropriety.
impropriate ::: v. t. --> To appropriate to one&
impropriation ::: n. --> The act of impropriating; as, the impropriation of property or tithes; also, that which is impropriated.
The act of putting an ecclesiastical benefice in the hands of a layman, or lay corporation.
A benefice in the hands of a layman, or of a lay corporation.
impropriator ::: n. --> One who impropriates; specifically, a layman in possession of church property.
In Aristotelian logic, whatever term can be predicated of, without being essential or peculiar to the subject (q.v.). Logical or predicable (q.v.) -- opposed to property (q.v.) -- is that quality which adheres to a subject in such a manner that it neither constitutes its essence nor necessarily flows from its essence; as, a man is white or learned.
incendiary ::: n. --> Any person who maliciously sets fire to a building or other valuable or other valuable property.
A person who excites or inflames factions, and promotes quarrels or sedition; an agitator; an exciter. ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to incendiarism, or the malicious
income ::: n. --> A coming in; entrance; admittance; ingress; infusion.
That which is caused to enter; inspiration; influence; hence, courage or zeal imparted.
That gain which proceeds from labor, business, property, or capital of any kind, as the produce of a farm, the rent of houses, the proceeds of professional business, the profits of commerce or of occupation, or the interest of money or stock in funds, etc.; revenue; receipts; salary; especially, the annual receipts of a private person,
incompressibility ::: n. --> The quality of being incompressible, or incapable of reduction in volume by pressure; -- formerly supposed to be a property of liquids.
Inconceivability: The property of being something that is unthinkable. Having self-contradictory properties such that mental representation is impossible. In metaphysics, Herbert Spencer's criterion of truth, that when the denial of a proposition is incapable of being conceived the proposition is to be accepted as necessary or true. Syn. with Inconceptible. -- J.K.F.
incumbrance ::: n. --> A burdensome and troublesome load; anything that impedes motion or action, or renders it difficult or laborious; clog; impediment; hindrance; check.
A burden or charge upon property; a claim or lien upon an estate, which may diminish its value.
indehiscence ::: n. --> The property or state of being indehiscent.
independent ::: a. --> Not dependent; free; not subject to control by others; not relying on others; not subordinate; as, few men are wholly independent.
Affording a comfortable livelihood; as, an independent property.
Not subject to bias or influence; not obsequious; self-directing; as, a man of an independent mind.
Expressing or indicating the feeling of independence;
indigent ::: a. --> Wanting; void; free; destitute; -- used with of.
Destitute of property or means of comfortable subsistence; needy; poor; in want; necessitous.
indirect jump "programming" A {jump} via an {indirect address}, i.e. the jump {instruction} contains the address of a memory location that contains the address of the next instruction to execute. The location containing the address to jump to is sometimes called a {vector}. Indirect jumps make normal code hard to understand because the jump target is a run-time property of the program that depends on the execution history. They are useful for, e.g. allowing user code to replace operating system code or setting up {event handlers}. (2010-01-01)
individuality ::: n. --> The quality or state of being individual or constituting an individual; separate or distinct existence; oneness; unity.
The character or property appropriate or peculiar to an individual; that quality which distinguishes one person or thing from another; the sum of characteristic traits; distinctive character; as, he is a person of marked individuality.
indivisibility ::: n. --> The state or property of being indivisible or inseparable; inseparability.
indorsement ::: n. --> The act of writing on the back of a note, bill, or other written instrument.
That which is written on the back of a note, bill, or other paper, as a name, an order for, or a receipt of, payment, or the return of an officer, etc.; a writing, usually upon the back, but sometimes on the face, of a negotiable instrument, by which the property therein is assigned and transferred.
Sanction, support, or approval; as, the indorsement of
induction "logic" A method of proving statements about {well-ordered sets}. If S is a well-ordered set with ordering """, and we want to show that a property P holds for every element of S, it is sufficient to show that, for all s in S, IF for all t in S, t " s =" P(t) THEN P(s) I.e. if P holds for anything less than s then it holds for s. In this case we say P is proved by induction. The most common instance of proof by induction is induction over the {natural numbers} where we prove that some property holds for n=0 and that if it holds for n, it holds for n+1. (In fact it is sufficient for """ to be a {well-founded} {partial order} on S, not necessarily a well-ordering of S.) (1999-12-09)
inequality ::: n. --> The quality of being unequal; difference, or want of equality, in any respect; lack of uniformity; disproportion; unevenness; disparity; diversity; as, an inequality in size, stature, numbers, power, distances, motions, rank, property, etc.
Unevenness; want of levelness; the alternate rising and falling of a surface; as, the inequalities of the surface of the earth, or of a marble slab, etc.
Variableness; changeableness; inconstancy; lack of
inertia ::: n. --> That property of matter by which it tends when at rest to remain so, and when in motion to continue in motion, and in the same straight line or direction, unless acted on by some external force; -- sometimes called vis inertiae.
Inertness; indisposition to motion, exertion, or action; want of energy; sluggishness.
Want of activity; sluggishness; -- said especially of the uterus, when, in labor, its contractions have nearly or wholly ceased.
inheritance ::: fig. Something that is or may be inherited; property passing at the owner"s death to the heir or those entitled to succeed.
injurious ::: a. --> Not just; wrongful; iniquitous; culpable.
Causing injury or harm; hurtful; harmful; detrimental; mischievous; as, acts injurious to health, credit, reputation, property, etc.
injury ::: a. --> Any damage or violation of, the person, character, feelings, rights, property, or interests of an individual; that which injures, or occasions wrong, loss, damage, or detriment; harm; hurt; loss; mischief; wrong; evil; as, his health was impaired by a severe injury; slander is an injury to the character.
In modern thought, two general types of usage are discernible. In the empirical tradition. the notion of thing and properties continues the meaning of independence as expressed in first substance. Under the impact of physical science, the notion of thing and its properties tends to dissolve. Substance becomes substratum as that in which properties and qualities inhere. The critique of Berkeley expressed the resultant dilemma: either sub-stratum is property-less and quality-less, and so is nothing at all, or else it signifies the systematic and specific coherence of properties and qualities, and so substance or sub-stratum is merely the thing of common sense. Within science 'first substance' persists as the ultimate discrete particle with respect to which spatial and temporal coordinates are assigned. Within empirical philosophical thought the element of meaning described as 'independence' tends to be resolved into the order and coherence of experience.
In Scholasticism: Reflexion is a property of spiritual or immaterial substances only. It is, therefore, a capacity of the human intellect which not only operates, but knows of its operating and may turn back on itself to know itself and its performances (reditio completa). A particular kind of reflexion is, in Thomism the reflexio super phantasma, by which the intellect retraces its steps until it reaches the phantasm from which it originally derived the universal; this is, according to Aquinas, the way the intellect comes to know the particular which, because material, is otherwise inaccessible to an immaterial faculty. -- R.A.
insurance ::: n. --> The act of insuring, or assuring, against loss or damage by a contingent event; a contract whereby, for a stipulated consideration, called premium, one party undertakes to indemnify or guarantee another against loss by certain specified risks. Cf. Assurance, n., 6.
The premium paid for insuring property or life.
The sum for which life or property is insured.
A guaranty, security, or pledge; assurance.
intellectual property "legal" (IP) The ownership of ideas and control over the tangible or virtual representation of those ideas. Use of another person's intellectual property may or may not involve royalty payments or permission, but should always include proper credit to the source. (1997-03-27)
Intentionality: (Lat. intentio, from intendere, to stretch) The property of consciousness whereby it refers to or intends an object. The intentional object is not necessarily a real or existent thing but is merely that which the mental act is about. Intentionality is the modern equivalent of the Scholastic intentio. -- L.W.
interloper ::: n. --> One who interlopes; one who interlopes; one who unlawfully intrudes upon a property, a station, or an office; one who interferes wrongfully or officiously.
In the rationalistic tradition, Descartes introduces a distinction between finite and infinite substance. To conceive of substance is to conceive an existing thing which requires nothing but itself in order to exist. Strictly speaking, God alone is substance. Created or finite substances are independent in the sense that they need only the concurrence of God in order to exist. 'Everything in which there resides immediately, as in a subject, or by means of which there exists anything that we perceive, i.e., any property, quality, or attribute, of which we have a real idea, is called a Substance." (Reply to Obj. II, Phil. Works, trans, by Haldane and Ross, vol. II, p. 53, see Prin. of Phil. Pt. I, 51, 52). Substance is that which can exist by itself without the aid of any other substance. Reciprocal exclusion of one another belongs to the nature of substance. (Reply to Obj. IV). Spinoza brings together medieval Aristotelian meanings and the Cartesian usage, but rejects utterly the notion of finite substance, leaving only the infinite. The former is, in effect, a contradiction in terms, according to him. Spinoza further replaces the Aristotelian distinction between substance and accident with that between substance and mode. (See Wolfson, The Phil. of Spinoza, vol. I, ch. 3). "By substance, I understand that which is in itself and is conceived through itself; in other words that, the conception of which does not need the conception of another thing from which it must be formed." (Ethics, I, Def. III). Substance is thus ultimate being, self-caused or from itself (a se), and so absolutely independent being, owing its being to itself, and eternally self-sustaining. It is in itself (in se), and all things are within it. Substance is one and there can be but one substance; God is this substance. For Descartes, every substance has a principal attribute, an unchangeable essential nature, without which it can neither be nor be understood. The attribute is thus constitutive of substance, and the latter is accessible to mind only through the former. By virtue of having different constitutive essences or attributes, substances are opposed to one another. Spinoza, rejecting the idea of finite substance, necessarily rejects the possibility of a plurality of substances. The attributes of the one substance are plural and are constitutive. But the plurality of attributes implies that substance as such cannot be understood by way of any one attribute or by way of several. Accordingly, Spinoza declares that substance is also per se, i.e., conceived through itself. The infinite mode of an attribute, the all pervasive inner character which defines an attribute in distinction from another, is Spinoza's adaptation of the Cartesian constitutive essence.
"In the social relations which men carry on they enter into definite relations that are indispensible and independent of their will. These relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material powers of production. . . . At a certain stage of their development the material forces of production in society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or -- what is but a legal expression for the same thing -- with the property relations within which they had been at work before. From forms of development of the forces of production these relations turn into their fetters. Then comes the period of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations the distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic -- in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out." (Marx: Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, p. 12.) -- J.M.S.
In the theory of value the first question concerns the meaning of value-terms and the status of goodness. As to meaning the main point is whether goodness is definable or not, and if so, how. As to status the main point is whether goodness is subjective or objective, relative or absolute. Various positions are possible. Recent emotive meaning theories e.g. that of A. J. Ayer, hold that "good" and other value-terms have only an emotive meaning, Intuitionists and non-naturalists often hold that goodness is an indefinable intrinsic (and therefore objective or absolute) property, e.g., Plato, G. E. Moore, W. D. Ross, J. Laird, Meinong, N. Hartman. Metaphysical and naturalistic moralists usually hold that goodness can be defined in metaphysical or in psychological terms, generally interpreting "x is good" to mean that a certain attitude is taken toward x by some mind or group of minds. For some of them value is objective or absolute in the sense of having the same locus for everyone, e.g., Aristotle in his definition of the good as that at which all things aim, (Ethics, bk. I). For others the locus of value varies from individual to individual or from group to group, i.e. different things will be good for different individuals or groups, e.g., Hobbes, Westermarck, William James, R. B. Perry.
In translation into logical notation, the word nothing is usually to be represented by the negation of an existential quantifier. Thus "nothing has the property F" becomes "∼(Ex)F(x)." -- A.C.
Intrinsic goodness: The property of being good in itself or good as an end (and not as a means merely) or desirable for its own sake. Sometimes identified with the property of being desired for its own sake. According to G. E. Moore a thing is intrinsically good if it would be good even if it existed quite alone. -- W.K.F.
invariance ::: n. --> The property of remaining invariable under prescribed or implied conditions.
inventory ::: n. --> An account, catalogue, or schedule, made by an executor or administrator, of all the goods and chattels, and sometimes of the real estate, of a deceased person; a list of the property of which a person or estate is found to be possessed; hence, an itemized list of goods or valuables, with their estimated worth; specifically, the annual account of stock taken in any business. ::: v. t.
investment ::: n. --> The act of investing, or the state of being invested.
That with which anyone is invested; a vestment.
The act of surrounding, blocking up, or besieging by an armed force, or the state of being so surrounded.
The laying out of money in the purchase of some species of property; the amount of money invested, or that in which money is invested.
irony ::: a. --> Made or consisting of iron; partaking of iron; iron; as, irony chains; irony particles.
Resembling iron taste, hardness, or other physical property. ::: n. --> Dissimulation; ignorance feigned for the purpose of confounding or provoking an antagonist.
irritability ::: n. --> The state or quality of being irritable; quick excitability; petulance; fretfulness; as, irritability of temper.
A natural susceptibility, characteristic of all living organisms, tissues, and cells, to the influence of certain stimuli, response being manifested in a variety of ways, -- as that quality in plants by which they exhibit motion under suitable stimulation; esp., the property which living muscle processes, of responding either to a direct stimulus of its substance, or to the
It can be shown that all theorems A of the pure functional calculus of first order which contain no free individual variables have the property that ∼A is not satisfiable. Hence the pure functional calculus of first order is not complete in the strong sense in which the pure propositional calculus is complete. Gödel has shown that the pure functional calculus of first order is complete in the weaker sense that if a formula A contains no free individual variables and ∼A is not satisfiable then A is a theorem.
iterative deepening "algorithm" A {graph} search {algorithm} that will find the shortest path with some given property, even when the graph contains {cycles}. When searching for a path through a graph, starting at a given initial {node}, where the path (or its end node) has some desired property, a {depth-first search} may never find a solution if it enters a cycle in the graph. Rather than avoiding cycles (i.e. never extend a path with a node it already contains), iterative deepening explores all paths up to length (or "depth") N, starting from N=0 and increasing N until a solution is found. (2004-01-26)
It is an error to see Bergson's philosophy as being exclusively an intuitive critique of knowledge. Such a mode of exposition constructs of his thought a mere "ism", a species of intuitionalism. Bergson was the first to try to give the term intuition a scientific basis. He transformed and regrounded the static pattern of the older forms of intuitionism by giving it a biogenetic and psychologically dynamic justification. Intuitive knowledge is not limited to the favored few, is not a private, purely solipsistic affair, but is a general property of all thinking minds. Bergson's conception of intuition represents a fusion of scientific objectivity and artistic directness.
It is customary to distinguish between the nature of truth and the tests for truth. There are three traditional theories as to the nature of truth, each finding virious expression in the works of different exponents. According to the correspondence theory, a proposition (or meaning) is true if there is a fact to which it corresponds. if it expresses what is the case. For example, "It is raining here now" is true if it is the case that it is raining here now; otherwise it is false. The nature of the relation of correspondence between fact and true proposition is variously described by different writers, or left largely undescribed. Russell in The Problems of Philosophy speaks of the correspondence as consisting of an identity of the constituents of the fact and of the proposition. According to the coherence theory (see H. H. Joachim: The Nature of Truth), truth is systematic coherence. This is more than logical consistency. A proposition is true insofar is it is a necessary constituent of a systematically coherent whole. According to some (e.g., Brand Blanshard, The Nature of Truth), this whole must be such that every element in it necessitates, indeed entails, every other element. Strictly, on this view, truth, in its fullness, is a characteristic of only the one systematic coherent whole, which is the absolute. It attaches to propositions as we know them and to wholes as we know them only to a degree. A proposition has a degree of truth proportionate to the completeness of the systematic coherence of the system of entities to which it belongs. According to the pragmatic theory of truth, a proposition is true insofar as it works or satisfies, working or satisfying being described variously by different exponents of the view. Some writers insist that truth chiracterizes only those propositions (ideas) whose satisfactory working has actually verified them; others state that only verifiability through such consequences is necessary. In either case, writers differ as to the precise nature of the verifying experiences required. See Pragmatism. --C.A.B. Truth, semantical: Closely connected with the name relation (q.v.) is the property of a propositional formula (sentence) that it expresses a true proposition (or if it has free variables, that it expresses a true proposition for all values of these variables). As in the case of the name relation, a notation for the concept of truth in this sense often cannot be added, with its natural properties, to an (interpreted) logistic system without producing contradiction. A particular system may, however, be made the beginning of a hierarchy of systems each containing the truth concept appropriate to the preceding one.
IV. Probability as a Primitive Notion: According to this interpretation, whicn is due particularly to Keynes, probability is taken as ultimate or undefined, and it is made known through its essential characteristics. Thus, probability is neither an intrinsic property of propositions like truth, nor an empty concept, but a relative property linking a proposition with its partial evidence. It follows that the probability of the same proposition varies with the evidence presented, and that even though a proposition may turn out to be false, our judgment that it is probable upon a given evidence can be correct. Further, since probability belongs to a proposition only in its relation to other propositions, probability-inferences cannot be the same as truth-inferences as they cannot break the chain of relations between their premisses, they lack one of the essential features usually ascribed to inference. That is why, in particular, the conclusions of the natural sciences cannot be separated from their evidence, as it may be the case with the deductive sciences. With such assumptions, probability is the group name given to the processes which strengthen or increase the likelihood of an analogy. The main objection to this interpretation is the arbitrary character of its primitive idea. There is no reason why there are relations between propositions such that p is probable upon q, even on the assumption of the relative character of probability. There must be conditions determining which propositions are probable upon others. Hence we must look beyond the primitive idea itself and place the ground of probability elsewhere.
jackstraw ::: n. --> An effigy stuffed with straw; a scarecrow; hence, a man without property or influence.
One of a set of straws of strips of ivory, bone, wood, etc., for playing a child&
Judgment of Taste: The assertion that an object is beautiful, or aesthetically pleasing. Such propositions are traditionally classified as judgments of value, as distinguished from judgments of fact, and are regarded as making assertions about the subjective reaction and interest that the object has aroused, and not about any intrinsic property of the object. Hence, generally interpreted as having no claim to universality. Kant, and others, have sought to establish their universality on the ground that they assert a necessary subjective reaction. -- I.J.
keeper ::: n. --> One who, or that which, keeps; one who, or that which, holds or has possession of anything.
One who retains in custody; one who has the care of a prison and the charge of prisoners.
One who has the care, custody, or superintendence of anything; as, the keeper of a park, a pound, of sheep, of a gate, etc. ; the keeper of attached property; hence, one who saves from harm; a defender; a preserver.
Kind: (a) A class or collection of entities having a common character that differentiates members of this class from non-members, (b) J. S. Mill (System of Logic) limits the term to natural classes, such as biological species, where members have, in addition to the defining property, an unlimited number of other properties in common. -- C.A.B.
kohnur ::: n. --> A famous diamond, surrendered to the British crown on the annexation of the Punjab. According to Hindoo legends, it was found in a Golconda mine, and has been the property of various Hindoo and Persian rulers.
labadist ::: n. --> A follower of Jean de Labadie, a religious teacher of the 17th century, who left the Roman Catholic Church and taught a kind of mysticism, and the obligation of community of property among Christians.
lairdship ::: n. --> The state of being a laird; an estate; landed property.
landed ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Land ::: a. --> Having an estate in land.
Consisting in real estate or land; as, landed property; landed security.
landfall ::: n. --> A sudden transference of property in land by the death of its owner.
Sighting or making land when at sea.
landless ::: a. --> Having no property in land.
landowning ::: n. --> The owning of land. ::: a. --> Having property in land; of or pertaining to landowners.
law. The legal claim of one person upon the property of another person to secure the payment of a debt of the satisfaction of an obligation.
lease ::: a contract granting use or occupation of property during a specified period in exchange for a specified compensation.
legacy ::: n. --> A gift of property by will, esp. of money or personal property; a bequest. Also Fig.; as, a legacy of dishonor or disease.
A business with which one is intrusted by another; a commission; -- obsolete, except in the phrases last legacy, dying legacy, and the like.
Legal Philosophy: Deals with the philosophic principles of law and justice. The origin is to be found in ancient philosophy. The Greek Sophists criticized existing laws and customs by questioning their validity: All human rules are artificial, created by enactment or convention, as opposed to natural law, based on nature. The theory of a law of nature was further developed by Aristotle and the Stoics. According to the Stoics the natural law is based upon the eternal law of the universe; this itself is an outgrowth of universal reason, as man's mind is an offshoot of the latter. The idea of a law of nature as being innate in man was particularly stressed and popularized by Cicero who identified it with "right reason" and already contrasted it with written law that might be unjust or even tyrannical. Through Saint Augustine these ideas were transmitted to medieval philosophy and by Thomas Aquinas built into his philosophical system. Thomas considers the eternal law the reason existing in the divine mind and controlling the universe. Natural law, innate in man participates in that eternal law. A new impetus was given to Legal Philosophy by the Renaissance. Natural Jurisprudence, properly so-called, originated in the XVII. century. Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes, Benedictus Spinoza, John Locke, Samuel Pufendorf were the most important representatives of that line of thought. Grotius, continuing the Scholastic tradition, particularly stressed the absoluteness of natural hw (it would exist even if God did not exist) and, following Jean Bodin, the sovereignty of the people. The idea of the social contract traced all political bodies back to a voluntary compact by which every individual gave up his right to self-government, or rather transferred it to the government, abandoning a state of nature which according to Hobbes must have been a state of perpetual war. The theory of the social compact more and more accepts the character of a "fiction" or of a regulative idea (Kant). In this sense the theory means that we ought to judge acts of government by their correspondence to the general will (Rousseau) and to the interests of the individuals who by transferring their rights to the commonwealth intended to establish their real liberty. Natural law by putting the emphasis on natural rights, takes on a revolutionary character. It played a part in shaping the bills of rights, the constitutions of the American colonies and of the Union, as well as of the French declaration of the rights of men and of citizens. Natural jurisprudence in the teachings of Christian Wolff and Thomasius undergoes a kind of petrification in the vain attempt to outline an elaborate system of natural law not only in the field of international or public law, but also in the detailed regulations of the law of property, of contract, etc. This sort of dogmatic approach towards the problems of law evoked the opposition of the Historic School (Gustav Hugo and Savigny) which stressed the natural growth of laws ind customs, originating from the mysterious "spirit of the people". On the other hand Immanuel Kant tried to overcome the old natural law by the idea of a "law of reason", meaning an a priori element in all existing or positive law. In his definition of law ("the ensemble of conditions according to which everyone's will may coexist with the will of every other in accordance with a general rule of liberty"), however, as in his legal philosophy in general, he still shares the attitude of the natural law doctrine, confusing positive law with the idea of just law. This is also true of Hegel whose panlogism seemed to lead in this very direction. Under the influence of epistemological positivism (Comte, Mill) in the later half of the nineteenth century, legal philosophy, especially in Germany, confined itself to a "general theory of law". Similarily John Austin in England considered philosophy of law concerned only with positive law, "as it necessarily is", not as it ought to be. Its main task was to analyze certain notions which pervade the science of law (Analytical Jurisprudence). In recent times the same tendency to reduce legal philosophy to logical or at least methodological tasks was further developed in attempting a pure science of law (Kelsen, Roguin). Owing to the influence of Darwinism and natural science in general the evolutionist and biological viewpoint was accepted in legal philosophy: comparative jurisprudence, sociology of law, the Freirecht movement in Germany, the study of the living law, "Realism" in American legal philosophy, all represent a tendency against rationalism. On the other hand there is a revival of older tendencies: Hegelianism, natural law -- especially in Catholic philosophy -- and Kantianism (beginning with Rudolf Stammler). From here other trends arose: the critical attitude leads to relativism (f.i. Gustav Radbruch); the antimetaphysical tendency towards positivism -- though different from epistemological positivism -- and to a pure theory of law. Different schools of recent philosophy have found their applications or repercussions in legal philosophy: Phenomenology, for example, tried to intuit the essences of legal institutions, thus coming back to a formalist position, not too far from the real meaning of analytical jurisprudence. Neo-positivism, though so far not yet explicitly applied to legal philosophy, seems to lead in the same direction. -- W.E.
levy ::: n. --> A name formerly given in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia to the Spanish real of one eighth of a dollar (or 12/ cents), valued at eleven pence when the dollar was rated at 7s. 6d.
The act of levying or collecting by authority; as, the levy of troops, taxes, etc.
That which is levied, as an army, force, tribute, etc.
The taking or seizure of property on executions to satisfy judgments, or on warrants for the collection of taxes; a collecting by
listless "programming" In {functional programming}, a property of a {function} which allows it to be combined with other functions in a way that eliminates intermediate data structures, especially lists. {Phil Wadler}'s thesis gives the conditions for a function to be in listless form: each input list is traversed only once, one element at a time, from left to right. Each output list is generated once, one element at a time, from left to right. No other lists are generated or traversed. Not all functions can be expressed in listless form (e.g. reverse). (1995-02-22)
loss ::: v. t. --> The act of losing; failure; destruction; privation; as, the loss of property; loss of money by gaming; loss of health or reputation.
The state of losing or having lost; the privation, defect, misfortune, harm, etc., which ensues from losing.
That which is lost or from which one has parted; waste; -- opposed to gain or increase; as, the loss of liquor by leakage was considerable.
lubricity ::: n. --> Smoothness; freedom from friction; also, property, which diminishes friction; as, the lubricity of oil.
Slipperiness; instability; as, the lubricity of fortune.
Lasciviousness; propensity to lewdness; lewdness; lechery; incontinency.
magnetism ::: n. --> The property, quality, or state, of being magnetic; the manifestation of the force in nature which is seen in a magnet.
The science which treats of magnetic phenomena.
Power of attraction; power to excite the feelings and to gain the affections.
magnet ::: n. --> The loadstone; a species of iron ore (the ferrosoferric or magnetic ore, Fe3O4) which has the property of attracting iron and some of its ores, and, when freely suspended, of pointing to the poles; -- called also natural magnet.
A bar or mass of steel or iron to which the peculiar properties of the loadstone have been imparted; -- called, in distinction from the loadstone, an artificial magnet.
majorat ::: a. --> The right of succession to property according to age; -- so termed in some of the countries of continental Europe.
Property, landed or funded, so attached to a title of honor as to descend with it.
meddle ::: v. i. --> To mix; to mingle.
To interest or engage one&
memnon ::: n. --> A celebrated Egyptian statue near Thebes, said to have the property of emitting a harplike sound at sunrise.
META element "web" An {HTML} {element}, with tag name of "META", expressing {metadata} about a given {HTML} document. HTML standards do not require that documents have META elements but if META elements occur, they must be inside the document's HEAD element. The META element can be used to identify properties of a document (e.g., author, expiration date, a list of key words, etc.) and assign values to those properties, typically by specifying a NAME {attribute} (to name the property) and a CONTENT attribute (to assign a value for that property). The HTML 4 specification doesn't standardise particular NAME properties or CONTENT values; but it is conventional to use a "Description" property to convey a short summary of the document, and a "Keywords" property to provide a list of {keywords} relevant to the document, as in: "META NAME="Description" CONTENT="Information from around the world on kumquat farming techniques and current kumquat production and consumption data"" "META NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="kumquat, Fortunella"" META elements with HTTP-EQUIV and CONTENT attributes can simulate the effect of {HTTP} header lines, as in: "META HTTP-EQUIV="Expires" CONTENT="Tue, 22 Mar 2000 16:18:35 GMT"" "META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" CONTENT="10; URL=http://foldoc.org/"" Other properties may be application-specific. For example, the {Robots Exclusion (http://info.webcrawler.com/mak/projects/robots/norobots.html)}. standard uses the "robots" property for asserting that the given document should not be indexed by robots, nor should links in it be followed: "META NAME="robots" CONTENT="noindex,follow"" (2001-02-07)
misbug /mis-buhg/ [MIT] An unintended property of a program that turns out to be useful; something that should have been a {bug} but turns out to be a {feature}. Usage: rare. Compare {green lightning}. See {miswart}. [{Jargon File}]
modulus ::: n. --> A quantity or coefficient, or constant, which expresses the measure of some specified force, property, or quality, as of elasticity, strength, efficiency, etc.; a parameter.
mortgagee ::: n. --> The person to whom property is mortgaged, or to whom a mortgage is made or given.
mortgage ::: n. --> A conveyance of property, upon condition, as security for the payment of a debt or the preformance of a duty, and to become void upon payment or performance according to the stipulated terms; also, the written instrument by which the conveyance is made.
State of being pledged; as, lands given in mortgage. ::: v. t.
Motion: (Lat. moveo, move) Difference in space. Change of place. Erected into a universal principle by Heraclitus. Denied as a possibility by Parmenides and Zeno. Subdivided by Aristotle into alteration or change in shape, and augmentation or diminution or change in size. In realism: exclusively a property of actuality. -- J.K.F.
Nature Philosophers: Name given to pre-Socratic "physiologers" and to Renaissance philosophers who revived the study of physical processes. Early in the 16th century, as a result of the discovery of new lands, the revival of maritime trade, and the Reformation, there appeared in Europe a renewed interest in nature. Rationalism grown around the authorities of the Bible and Aristotle was challenged and the right to investigate phenomena was claimed. Interest in nature was directed at first toward the starry heaven and resulted in important discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler. The scientific spirit of observation and research had not yet matured, however, and the philosophers of that time blended their interest in facts with much loose speculation. Among the nature philosophers of that period three deserve to be mentioned specifically, Telesio, Bruno and Carnpanella, all natives of Southern Italy. Despite his assertions that thought should be guided by the observation of the external world, Bernardino Telesio (1508-1588) confined his works to reflections on the nature of things. Particularly significant are two of his doctrines, first, that the universe must be described in terms of matter and force, the latter classified as heat and cold, and second, that mind is akin to matter. Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), a Dominican monk and a victim of the Inquisition, was greatly influenced by the Copernican conception of the universe regarded by him as a harmonious unity of which the earth was but a small and not too important part. The concept of unity was not a condition of human search for truth but a real principle underlying all things and expressing the harmonious order of Divine wisdom. Deity, in his view, was the soul of nature, operating both in the human minds and in the motion of bodies. Consequently, both living beings and material objects must be regarded as animated. Tomaso Campanella (1568-1639), another Dominican monk, was also persecuted for his teachings and spent 27 years in prison. He contended that observations of nature were not dependent on the authority of reason and can be refuted only by other observations. His interests lay largely along the lines previously suggested by Telesio, and much of his thought was devoted to problems of mind, consciousness and knowledge. He believed that all nature was permeated by latent awareness, and may therefore be regarded as an animist or perhaps pantheist. Today, he is best known for his City of the Sun, an account of an imaginary ideal state in which existed neither property nor nobility and in which all affair were administered scientifically. -- R.B.W.
nondeterminism "algorithm" A property of a computation which may have more than one result. One way to implement a nondeterministic {algorithm} is using {backtracking}, another is to explore (all) possible solutions in parallel. (1995-04-13)
nondeterministic polynomial time "complexity" (NP) A set or property of computational {decision problems} solvable by a {nondeterministic Turing Machine} in a number of steps that is a {polynomial} function of the size of the input. The word "nondeterministic" suggests a method of generating potential solutions using some form of {nondeterminism} or "trial and error". This may take {exponential time} as long as a potential solution can be verified in {polynomial time}. NP is obviously a superset of P ({polynomial time} problems solvable by a deterministic {Turing Machine} in {polynomial time}) since a deterministic algorithm can be considered as a degenerate form of nondeterministic algorithm. The question then arises: is NP equal to P? I.e. can every problem in NP actually be solved in polynomial time? Everyone's first guess is "no", but no one has managed to prove this; and some very clever people think the answer is "yes". If a problem A is in NP and a polynomial time algorithm for A could also be used to solve problem B in polynomial time, then B is also in NP. See also {Co-NP}, {NP-complete}. [Examples?] (1995-04-10)
nonlinear (Scientific computation) A property of a system whose output is not proportional to its input. For example, a {transistor} has a region of input voltages for which its output voltage is found by multiplying the input voltage by the gain of the transistor. Outside this region though, the transistor behaves non-linearly, meaning that it does not obey this simple equation. The behaviour of a system containing non-linear components is thus harder to model and to predict. [{Jargon File}]
Non-Natural Properties: A notion which plays an important part in recent intuitionistic ethics. A non-natural property is one which is neither natural, as yellow and pleasantness are, nor metaphysical, as absoluteness and being commanded by God are. It is, then, a property which is apprehended, not by sensation or by introspection, but in some other way, and which is somehow non-descriptive, non-expository, or non-existential. It is also said sometimes, e.g. by G. E. Moore and W. D. Ross, to be a consequential property, i.e. a property which a thing has in virtue of its having another property, as when an experience is good in virtue of being pleasant. See Intuitionism. -- W.K.F.
non-polynomial "complexity" The set or property of problems for which no {polynomial-time algorithm} is known. This includes problems for which the only known {algorithms} require a number of steps which increases exponentially with the size of the problem, and those for which no {algorithm} at all is known. Within these two there are problems which are "{provably difficult}" and "{provably unsolvable}". (1995-04-10)
normalisation 1. "data processing" A transformation applied uniformly to each element in a set of data so that the set has some specific statistical property. For example, monthly measurements of the rainfall in London might be normalised by dividing each one by the total for the year to give a profile of rainfall throughout the year. 2. "programming" Representation of a {floating-point} number so that its {mantissa}'s left-most digit is non-zero. If the leftmost fraction digit are zeros, the number is said to be unnormalised. Unnormalised numbers are normalised by shifting the fraction left, one digit at a time, until the leftmost digit is nonzero and reducing the {exponent} by the number of shifts. 3. "database" {database normalisation}. (1998-04-15)
Now it is readily verified that all the primitive formulas are tautologies, and that for the rule of modus ponens (and the rule of substitution) the property holds that if the premisses of the inference are tautologies the conclusion must be a tautology. It follows that every theorem of the propositional calculus is a tautology. By a more difficult argument it can be shown also that every tautology is a theorem. Hence the test whether a formula is a tautology provides a solution of the decision problem of the propositional calculus.
Now value-theory is concerned both with the property of value and with the process of valuing. About the former it asks various questions. What is its nature? Is it a quality or a relation? Is it objective or subjective? Is it a single property, or is it several properties, value being an ambiguous term? Is its presence in a thing dependent on or reducible to the fact that the thing is valued by someone? About the latter it also has various questions. Is it a mere feeling or desire? Or does it involve judgment and cognition? And if so, is this a cognition of a value already there independently of the act of valuing or of knowing?
NP-complete "complexity" (NPC, Nondeterministic Polynomial time complete) A set or property of computational {decision problems} which is a subset of {NP} (i.e. can be solved by a {nondeterministic} {Turing Machine} in {polynomial} time), with the additional property that it is also {NP-hard}. Thus a solution for one NP-complete problem would solve all problems in NP. Many (but not all) naturally arising problems in class NP are in fact NP-complete. There is always a {polynomial-time algorithm} for transforming an instance of any NP-complete problem into an instance of any other NP-complete problem. So if you could solve one you could solve any other by transforming it to the solved one. The first problem ever shown to be NP-complete was the {satisfiability problem}. Another example is {Hamilton's problem}. See also {computational complexity}, {halting problem}, {Co-NP}, {NP-hard}. {(http://fi-www.arc.nasa.gov/fia/projects/bayes-group/group/NP/)}. [Other examples?] (1995-04-10)
oblati ::: n. pl. --> Children dedicated in their early years to the monastic state.
A class of persons, especially in the Middle Ages, who offered themselves and their property to a monastery.
Obversion of a proposition A, E, I, or O consists in replacing P by a functional constant p which denotes the negation of the propositional function (property) denoted by P, and at the same time inserting ∼ if not already present or deleting it if present. Thus the obverse of S(x) ⊃x P(x) is S(x) ⊃x ∼p(x) (the obverse of "all men are mortal" is "no men are immortal"). The obverse of S(x) ⊃x ∼P(x) is S(x) ⊃x p(x); the obverse of S(x) ∧x P(x) is S(x) ∧x ∼p(x); the obverse of S(x) ∧x ∼P(x) is S(x) ∧x p(x).
odour ::: the property of a substance that gives it a characteristic scent or smell.
opulent ::: a. --> Having a large estate or property; wealthy; rich; affluent; as, an opulent city; an opulent citizen.
organoplastic ::: a. --> Having the property of producing the tissues or organs of animals and plants; as, the organoplastic cells.
orthotomy ::: n. --> The property of cutting at right angles.
osmotic ::: a. --> Pertaining to, or having the property of, osmose; as, osmotic force.
papaw ::: n. --> A tree (Carica Papaya) of tropical America, belonging to the order Passifloreae. It has a soft, spongy stem, eighteen or twenty feet high, crowned with a tuft of large, long-stalked, palmately lobed leaves. The milky juice of the plant is said to have the property of making meat tender. Also, its dull orange-colored, melon-shaped fruit, which is eaten both raw and cooked or pickled.
A tree of the genus Asimina (A. triloba), growing in the western and southern parts of the United States, and producing a sweet
paraphernal ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to paraphernalia; as, paraphernal property.
parapherna ::: n. pl. --> The property of a woman which, on her marriage, was not made a part of her dower, but remained her own.
Particular: (Lat pars, a part) A member of a class as opposed to the property which defines the class; an individual as opposed to a universal. -- A.C.B.
pathos ::: n. --> That quality or property of anything which touches the feelings or excites emotions and passions, esp., that which awakens tender emotions, such as pity, sorrow, and the like; contagious warmth of feeling, action, or expression; pathetic quality; as, the pathos of a picture, of a poem, or of a cry.
pawnbroker ::: n. --> One who makes a business of lending money on the security of personal property pledged or deposited in his keeping.
pay ::: v. t. --> To cover, as bottom of a vessel, a seam, a spar, etc., with tar or pitch, or waterproof composition of tallow, resin, etc.; to smear.
To satisfy, or content; specifically, to satisfy (another person) for service rendered, property delivered, etc.; to discharge one&
peculate ::: v. i. --> To appropriate to one&
peculium ::: n. --> The saving of a son or a slave with the father&
penalty ::: n. --> Penal retribution; punishment for crime or offense; the suffering in person or property which is annexed by law or judicial decision to the commission of a crime, offense, or trespass.
The suffering, or the sum to be forfeited, to which a person subjects himself by covenant or agreement, in case of nonfulfillment of stipulations; forfeiture; fine.
A handicap.
penta- ::: --> A combining form denoting five; as, pentacapsular; pentagon.
Denoting the degree of five, either as regards quality, property, or composition; as, pentasulphide; pentoxide, etc. Also used adjectively.
peril ::: n. --> Danger; risk; hazard; jeopardy; exposure of person or property to injury, loss, or destruction. ::: v. t. --> To expose to danger; to hazard; to risk; as, to peril one&
permanence ::: the property of being able to exist for an indefinite duration. Permanence.
personalty ::: n. --> The state of being a person; personality.
Personal property, as distinguished from realty or real property.
piracy ::: n. --> The act or crime of a pirate.
Robbery on the high seas; the taking of property from others on the open sea by open violence; without lawful authority, and with intent to steal; -- a crime answering to robbery on land.
pirate ::: n. --> A robber on the high seas; one who by open violence takes the property of another on the high seas; especially, one who makes it his business to cruise for robbery or plunder; a freebooter on the seas; also, one who steals in a harbor.
An armed ship or vessel which sails without a legal commission, for the purpose of plundering other vessels on the high seas.
One who infringes the law of copyright, or publishes the
Platonism as a political philosophy finds its best known exposition in the theory of the ideal state in the Republic. There, Plato described a city in which social justice would be fully realized. Three classes of men are distinguished: the philosopher kings, apparently a very small group whose education has been alluded to above, who would be the rulers because by nature and by training they were the best men for the job. They must excel particularly in their rational abilities: their special virtue is philosophic wisdom; the soldiers, or guardians of the state, constitute the second class; their souls must be remarkable for the development of the spirited, warlike element, under the control of the virtue of courage; the lowest class is made up of the acquisitive group, the workers of every sort whose characteristic virtue is temperance. For the two upper classes, Plato suggested a form of community life which would entail the abolition of monogamous marriage, family life, and of private property. It is to be noted that this form of semi-communism was suggested for a minority of the citizens only (Repub. III and V) and it is held to be a practical impossibility in the Laws (V, 739-40), though Plato continued to think that some form of community life is theoretically best for man. In Book VIII of the Republic, we find the famous classification of five types of political organization, ranging from aristocracy which is the rule of the best men, timocracy, in which the rulers are motivated by a love of honor, oligarchy, in which the rulers seek wealth, democracy, the rule of the masses who are unfit for the task, to tyranny, which is the rule of one man who may have started as the champion of the people but who governs solely for the advancement of his own, selfish interests.
pledgee ::: n. --> The one to whom a pledge is given, or to whom property pledged is delivered.
pledge ::: n. --> The transfer of possession of personal property from a debtor to a creditor as security for a debt or engagement; also, the contract created between the debtor and creditor by a thing being so delivered or deposited, forming a species of bailment; also, that which is so delivered or deposited; something put in pawn.
A person who undertook, or became responsible, for another; a bail; a surety; a hostage.
A hypothecation without transfer of possession.
pleochroic ::: a. --> Having the property of pleochroism.
pleochroism ::: n. --> The property possessed by some crystals, of showing different colors when viewed in the direction of different axes.
pleomorphism ::: n. --> The property of crystallizing under two or more distinct fundamental forms, including dimorphism and trimorphism.
The theory that the various genera of bacteria are phases or variations of growth of a number of Protean species, each of which may exhibit, according to undetermined conditions, all or some of the forms characteristic of the different genera and species.
pleomorphous ::: a. --> Having the property of pleomorphism.
plesimorphism ::: n. --> The property possessed by some substances of crystallizing in closely similar forms while unlike in chemical composition.
plum ::: n. --> The edible drupaceous fruit of the Prunus domestica, and of several other species of Prunus; also, the tree itself, usually called plum tree.
A grape dried in the sun; a raisin.
A handsome fortune or property; formerly, in cant language, the sum of £100,000 sterling; also, the person possessing it.
plunder ::: property stolen by fraud or force; booty.
poinder ::: n. --> The keeper of a cattle pound; a pinder.
One who distrains property.
polarity ::: n. --> That quality or condition of a body in virtue of which it exhibits opposite, or contrasted, properties or powers, in opposite, or contrasted, parts or directions; or a condition giving rise to a contrast of properties corresponding to a contrast of positions, as, for example, attraction and repulsion in the opposite parts of a magnet, the dissimilar phenomena corresponding to the different sides of a polarized ray of light, etc.
A property of the conic sections by virtue of which a
poor ::: superl. --> Destitute of property; wanting in material riches or goods; needy; indigent.
So completely destitute of property as to be entitled to maintenance from the public.
Destitute of such qualities as are desirable, or might naturally be expected
Wanting in fat, plumpness, or fleshiness; lean; emaciated; meager; as, a poor horse, ox, dog, etc.
possess ::: 1. To gain or seize for oneself. 2. To gain or exert influence or control over the emotions etc.; dominate. 3. To have as one"s property; own. possesses, possessed.
possession ::: 1. The act of possessing or state of being possessed. 2. Wealth or property. 3. Control over one"s self, one"s mind, etc. possessions.
possessioner ::: n. --> A possessor; a property holder.
An invidious name for a member of any religious community endowed with property in lands, buildings, etc., as contrasted with mendicant friars.
possession ::: n. --> The act or state of possessing, or holding as one&
possess ::: v. t. --> To occupy in person; to hold or actually have in one&
Praedicabilia: (Lat. that which is able to be predicated) Since Greek philosophic thinking, the modes of predicating or the concepts to be affirmed of any subject whatsoever, usually enumerated as five: genus, species, difference, property (or, characteristic), and accident. They assumed an important role in the scholastic discussions of universals. According to Kant, they are pure, yet derived concepts of the understanding. -- K.F.L.
Predicables: (Lat. praedicabilia) In Aristotle's logic the five types of predicates that may be affirmed or denied of a subject in a logical proposition, viz. definition, genus, differentia, property, and accident. The list of predicables as formulated by Porphyry and later logicians omits definition and includes species. See Definition: Genus; Species; Differentia; Property; Accident. -- G.R.M.
private ::: a. --> Belonging to, or concerning, an individual person, company, or interest; peculiar to one&
privity ::: a. --> Privacy; secrecy; confidence.
Private knowledge; joint knowledge with another of a private concern; cognizance implying consent or concurrence.
A private matter or business; a secret.
The genitals; the privates.
A connection, or bond of union, between parties, as to some particular transaction; mutual or successive relationship to the same rights of property.
prize ::: n. --> That which is taken from another; something captured; a thing seized by force, stratagem, or superior power.
Anything captured by a belligerent using the rights of war; esp., property captured at sea in virtue of the rights of war, as a vessel.
An honor or reward striven for in a competitive contest; anything offered to be competed for, or as an inducement to, or reward of, effort.
Probability: In general Chance, possibility, contingency, likelihood, likehness, presumption. conjecture, prediction, forecast, credibility, relevance; the quality or state of being likely true or likely to happen; a fact or a statement which is likely true, real, operative or provable by future events; the conditioning of partial or approximate belief or assent; the motive of a presumption or prediction; the conjunction of reasonable grounds for presuming the truth of a statement or the occurrence of an event; the field of knowledge between complete ignorance and full certitude; an approximation to fact or truth; a qualitative or numerical value attached to a probable inference, and by extension, the systematic study of chances or relative possibilities as forming the subject of the theory of probability. A. The Foundation of Probability. We cannot know everything completely and with certainty. Yet we desire to think and to act as correctly as possible hence the necessity of considering methods leading to reasonable approximations, and of estimating their results in terms of the relative evidence available in each case. In D VI-VII (infra) only, is probability interpreted as a property of events or occurrences as such: whether necessary or contingent, facts are simply conditioned by other facts, and have neither an intelligence nor a will to realize their certainty or their probability. In other views, probability requires ultimately a mind to perceive it as such it arises from the combination of our partial ignorance of the extremely complex nature and conditions of the phenomena, with the inadequacy of our means of observation, experimentation and analysis, however searching and provisionally satisfactory. Thus it may be said that probability exists formally in the mind and materially in the phenomena as related between themselves. In stressing the one or the other of these two aspects, we obtain (1) subjectize probability, when the psychological conditions of the mind cause it to evaluate a fact or statement with fear of possible error; and (2) objective probability, when reference is made to that quality of facts and statements, which causes the mind to estimate them with a conscious possibility of error. Usually, methods can be devised to objectify technically the subjective aspect of probability, such as the rules for the elimination of the personal equation of the inquirer. Hence the methods established for the study and the interpretation of chances can be considered independently of the state of mind as such of the inquirer. These methods make use of rational or empirical elements. In the first case, we are dealing with a priori or theoretical probability, which considers the conditions or occurrences of an event hypothetically and independently of any direct experience. In the second case, we are dealing with inductive or empirical probability. And when these probabilities are represented with numerals or functions to denote measures of likelihood, we are concerned with quantitative or mathematical probability. Methods involving the former cannot be assimilated with methods involving the latter, but both can be logically correlated on the strength of the general principle of explanation, that similar conjunctions of moral or physical facts demand a general law governing and justifying them.
proletary ::: n. --> A citizen of the lowest class, who served the state, not with property, but only by having children; hence, a common person.
propertied ::: a. --> Possessing property; holding real estate, or other investments of money.
properties ::: pl. --> of Property
property ::: a. --> That which is proper to anything; a peculiar quality of a thing; that which is inherent in a subject, or naturally essential to it; an attribute; as, sweetness is a property of sugar.
An acquired or artificial quality; that which is given by art, or bestowed by man; as, the poem has the properties which constitute excellence.
The exclusive right of possessing, enjoying, and disposing of a thing; ownership; title.
property ::: something owned; a possession.
prop ::: n. 1. An object placed beneath or against a structure to keep it from falling or shaking; a support. 2. Fig. A person or thing giving support, as of a moral or spiritual nature. 3. Theat. Property, a usually moveable item, other than costumes or scenery, used on the set of a theatre production, motion picture, etc.; any object handled or used by an actor in a performance. v. 3. To sustain or support. props.
propriety ::: n. --> Individual right to hold property; ownership by personal title; property.
That which is proper or peculiar; an inherent property or quality; peculiarity.
The quality or state of being proper; suitableness to an acknowledged or correct standard or rule; consonance with established principles, rules, or customs; fitness; appropriateness; as, propriety of behavior, language, manners, etc.
pseudomorphism ::: n. --> The state of having, or the property of taking, a crystalline form unlike that which belongs to the species.
pseudosphere ::: n. --> The surface of constant negative curvature generated by the revolution of a tractrix. This surface corresponds in non-Euclidian space to the sphere in ordinary space. An important property of the surface is that any figure drawn upon it can be displaced in any way without tearing it or altering in size any of its elements.
publicly ::: adv. --> With exposure to popular view or notice; without concealment; openly; as, property publicly offered for sale; an opinion publicly avowed; a declaration publicly made.
In the name of the community.
publicness ::: n. --> The quality or state of being public, or open to the view or notice of people at large; publicity; notoriety; as, the publicness of a sale.
The quality or state of belonging to the community; as, the publicness of property.
purchaser ::: n. --> One who purchases; one who acquires property for a consideration, generally of money; a buyer; a vendee.
One who acquires an estate in lands by his own act or agreement, or who takes or obtains an estate by any means other than by descent or inheritance.
purpresture ::: n. --> Wrongful encroachment upon another&
quadrilateralness ::: n. --> The property of being quadrilateral.
quality ::: n. --> The condition of being of such and such a sort as distinguished from others; nature or character relatively considered, as of goods; character; sort; rank.
Special or temporary character; profession; occupation; assumed or asserted rank, part, or position.
That which makes, or helps to make, anything such as it is; anything belonging to a subject, or predicable of it; distinguishing property, characteristic, or attribute; peculiar power,
quantity ::: v. t. --> To modify or qualify with respect to quantity; to fix or express the quantity of; to rate. ::: n. --> The attribute of being so much, and not more or less; the property of being measurable, or capable of increase and decrease, multiplication and division; greatness; and more concretely, that which
quest ::: n. --> The act of seeking, or looking after anything; attempt to find or obtain; search; pursuit; as, to rove in quest of game, of a lost child, of property, etc.
Request; desire; solicitation.
Those who make search or inquiry, taken collectively.
Inquest; jury of inquest.
To search for; to examine.