Log in or Sign up

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. v. To reach (a conclusion) by reasoning.
  2. v. To infer from a general principle; reason deductively: deduced from the laws of physics that the new airplane would fly.
  3. v. To trace the origin or derivation of.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. To lead forth or away; conduct.
  2. To trace the course of; describe from first to last.
  3. To draw; derive; trace.
  4. To derive or conclude as a result of a known principle; draw as a necessary conclusion; infer from what is known or believed. See deduction, and deductive reasoning, under deductive.
  5. To bring before a court of justice for decision.
  6. To deduct.

Wiktionary

  1. v. To reach a conclusion by applying rules of logic to given premises.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. v. To lead forth.
  2. v. To take away; to deduct; to subtract.
  3. v. To derive or draw; to derive by logical process; to obtain or arrive at as the result of reasoning; to gather, as a truth or opinion, from what precedes or from premises; to infer; -- with from or out of.

WordNet 3.0

  1. v. conclude by reasoning; in logic
  2. v. reason by deduction; establish by deduction

Etymologies

  1. Middle English deducen, from Latin dēdūcere, to lead away or down : dē-, de- + dūcere, to lead; see deuk- in Indo-European roots.

Examples

  • “There is thus no reason to automatically deduce from a booklet and label about the moon that the vineyards are farmed biodynamically for they can be organic as well.”

    Department of Greenwashing: Ceci La Luna lambrusco | Dr Vino's wine blog

  • “Thus the only question left is why should one deduce from a “booklet explaining the phases of the moon” that the product has anything to do with Biodynamics?”

    Department of Greenwashing: Ceci La Luna lambrusco | Dr Vino's wine blog

  • “It cannot deduce from a book the nature of the being who wrote it.”

    A Materialist Red Herring

  • “As on can deduce from the quote from Wilson above, the Germans may have copied their racism from Anglo-phone countries, but Anglophone and French countries also had strong humanistic and egalitarian traditions that they did not copy.”

    Matthew Yglesias » The Real German Resistance to Hitler: The Social Democrats

  • “That man has a duty to so domesticate his passions to serve his reason we can deduce from the raw fact that the appetites are a multitude of contradictory desires, as easily able to be inconsistent with surrounding facts of reality as consistent.”

    Stoicism, Sophistry and Sodomy

  • “What his movements were after that I had largely to deduce from the facts of the situation, for I could scarcely see him in the dim starlight.”

    YELLOW HANDKERCHIEF

  • “The physicist Brian Pippard, who held Maxwell’s old chair†¦ at the University of Cambridge, has put it thus: ‘What is surely impossible is that a theoretical physicist, given unlimited computing power, should deduce from the law of physics that a certain complex structure is aware of its own existence. ’” (p44)”

    Continuation…

  • “So talking of conclusions, what can we deduce from the evening?”

    Archive 2008-01-01

  • “At any rate, the point of that was going to be that my plan failed, and I was unable to deduce from the search return which obscure text you were looking at.”

    Getting it Wrong

  • “That's what is being discussed; in particular, Eric's claim that there is some sort of 'Barrier' which he says he can deduce from the nature of evolution, symbols and meaning. stunny: That is false.”

    Bits and Pieces of an RNA World

Show 10 more examples...

Comments

No comments yet...

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

‘deduce’ has been looked up 2322 times, loved by 1 person, added to 17 lists, and has a Scrabble score of 10.