Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Serving to separate or divide.
  • adjective Grammar Serving to establish a relationship of contrast or opposition. The conjunction but in the phrase poor but comfortable is disjunctive.
  • adjective Of a proposition that presents two or more alternative terms.
  • adjective Of a syllogism that contains a disjunction as one premise.
  • noun A disjunctive conjunction.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Serving or tending to disjoin; separating; dividing; distinguishing: as, a disjunctive conjunction.
  • Incapable of joining or uniting.
  • Comprising or marked by a disjunction or separation of parts.
  • In music, pertaining to disjunct tetrachords: as, a disjunctive interval
  • noun In grammar, a word that disjoins; a disjunctive conjunction, as or, nor, neither.
  • noun In logic, a disjunctive proposition.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Gram.) A disjunctive conjunction.
  • noun (Logic) A disjunctive proposition.
  • adjective Tending to disjoin; separating; disjoining.
  • adjective (Mus.) Pertaining to disjunct tetrachords.
  • adjective (Gram.) one connecting grammatically two words or clauses, expressing at the same time an opposition or separation inherent in the notions or thoughts; as, either, or, neither, nor, but, although, except, lest, etc.
  • adjective a proposition in which the parts are connected by disjunctive conjunctions, specifying that one of two or more propositions may hold, but that no two propositions may hold at the same time; as it is either day or night.
  • adjective (Logic) one in which the major proposition is disjunctive; as, the earth moves in a circle or an ellipse; but in does not move in a circle, therefore it moves in an ellipse.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Not connected. Separated
  • adjective Of a personal pronoun, not used in immediate conjunction with the verb of which the pronoun is the subject, examples:
  • noun logic A disjunction.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective serving or tending to divide or separate

Etymologies

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Examples

  • This is what I call disjunctive politics, i.e., politics in which choices are made by the disjunctive syllogism: A or B; not A; therefore, B.

    The Volokh Conspiracy » Thoughts on Sarah Palin and Going Rogue 2009

  • In French, Louis XIV did not say L’état, c’est je; French has what they call the disjunctive pronoun so they can say C’est moi and Il est plus grand que moi.

    Between you and ? 2009

  • In French, Louis XIV did not say L’état, c’est je; French has what they call the disjunctive pronoun so they can say C’est moi and Il est plus grand que moi.

    Between you and ? 2009

  • Sections 3 to 7 of this article attend to the notion of disjunctive and conjunctive predicates.

    Determinates vs. Determinables Sanford, David H. 2006

  • (later called disjunctive properties) prove extremely useful for increasing our metaphysical knowledge.

    Amputee 2009

  • Like Ronald Reagan and Franklin Roosevelt, Barack Obama's election will follow what Stephen Skowronek described as "disjunctive" presidencies, those in which the presidents went so wayward, and economic conditions became so unacceptable, that the American people called for and accepted wholesale political revolution.

    Dylan Loewe: Realizing the Revolution 2008

  • His earliest compositions were songs for a former prog-rock band; the songs were "disjunctive" even for that free-form style, he said.

    columbiatribune.com stories 2010

  • Whittington brightens the dark moments in Skowronek's model — for example, omitting the category of "disjunctive" presidencies, failed attempts at affiliation — as he refines it to explain the development of judicial supremacy.

    Claremont.org 2009

  • Obama is just as evil as Bush. (1+3, disjunctive syllogism)

    Think Progress » ThinkFast: April 23, 2010 2010

  • Within this comes the central problem – a disjunctive between individual rights and their emphasis on the negative effects of indivdualisation causing the so-called ‘broken society’.

    2009 November « My Political Ramblings… 2009

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