Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Necessarily or demonstrably true; incontrovertible.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Demonstrative; incontestable because demonstrated or demonstrable; of the nature of necessary proof.
- In logic, a term descriptive of a form of judgment in which the connection of subject and predicate is asserted to be necessary; asserting its own necessity. Thus, “Two spheres whose centers are distant from each other by less than the sum of their radii must intersect” would be an apodictic judgment. Such judgments may be false. This use of the word appears to have originated with Kant.
- n. The logical doctrine of demonstration and of science.
Wiktionary
- adj. Incontrovertible; demonstrably true or certain.
- adj. A style of argument, in which a person presents their reasoning as categorically true, even if it is not necessarily so.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Same as apodeictic.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. of a proposition; necessarily true or logically certain
Etymologies
- Latin apodīcticus, from Greek apodeiktikos, from apodeiktos, demonstrable, from apodeiknunai, to demonstrate : apo-, apo- + deiknunai, to show; see deik- in Indo-European roots.
Examples
“As music, I have come to believe that it is the most perfect music that exists, so much so that I encounter every new chant with apodictic certainty of eventually discovering its profundity.”
“Suppose I could construct a flawless proof, based entirely on the apodictic truths of logic, that one may torture innocent people only on pain of contradiction.”
“If AE is about apodictic certainty, then it is not a science, but a pastime.”
Austrian Economists and the mainstream, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
“But this much we do know with apodictic certainty: virtually nothing in Iraq has gone as the US envisioned it.”
“To me that is apodictic—it proves it is morally wrong.”
“Moreover, there are certain aspects of the judgment which cannot be communicated in a statement, namely whether the judgment is evident or blind and whether it is apodictic or assertoric (Marty 1908a 289 ff.).”
“˜Although, apart from divine revelation, there is no apodictic certainty about things that exist outside our mind, but only moral or probable and likely certainty, that is still sufficient to perform adequately and to control all the activities of human life, since nothing more is required for them apart from moral or probable truth or the certainty and likelihood of knowledge™”
“But unique of all other religous truth claims in history, this teaching offers the first apodictic certainty.”
“I can think of no reason for a physician to add Avandia to a diabetic patient's treatment program in light of recent events even though we may never know with apodictic certainty if there is an increased risk of heart attack or not.”
You can tell a big thing from a little thing but a litle thing from nothing at all is really hard
“Sometimes controversies just die out without really being settled with apodictic medical certainty.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘apodictic’.
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Beyond Questions
Does pork cavort?, Do bungalows have..., Do burro(w)s have..., What do zappa zap?, indubitability, indisputability, in spades, myrmidon, West Lothian ques..., Lagrange multipliers, ultramontanism, conundrum and 18 more...
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most difficult words ever¬!
very difficult words ever!
jmjarmstrong JM entered the apodictic contest. Jan 10, 2011
garyth123 see apodeictic Jan 1, 2009
dain Doug finds the Critique of Pure Reason on Skeeter's bookshelf.
"The possibility of apodictic principles..." Apr 29, 2008
uselessness Same here. I think of Doug everytime I see a quail. But I don't remember this word on the show. Jul 12, 2007
seanahan I was a big fan of that show way back when, but I don't remember this word. Jul 12, 2007
dain Of course everyone added the word because they remember it from Nickelodeon's "Doug", right? Jul 11, 2007