Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To classify, include, or incorporate in a more comprehensive category or under a general principle: "The evolutionarily later always subsumes and includes the evolutionarily earlier” ( Frederick Turner).
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- In logic, to state (a case) under a general rule; instance (an object or objects) as belonging to a class under consideration. Especially, when the major proposition of a syllogism is first stated, the minor proposition is said to be subsumed under it. Modern writers often use the word in the sense of stating that the object of the verb belongs under a class, even though that class be not already mentioned.
Wiktionary
- v. To place (any one cognition) under another as belonging to it; to include or contain under something else.
- v. To consider an occurrence as part of a principle or rule; to colligate
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To take up into or under, as individual under species, species under genus, or particular under universal; to place (any one cognition) under another as belonging to it; to include under something else.
WordNet 3.0
- v. contain or include
- v. consider (an instance of something) as part of a general rule or principle
Etymologies
- From Late Latin subsumō, equivalent to the Latin sub- ("sub-") and sūmō ("to take"), confer the English consume. (Wiktionary)
- Medieval Latin subsūmere : Latin sub-, sub- + Latin sūmere, to take; see em- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“subsume" the least of individual things except in so far as the material element which is its body would surround all living things and bring them into contact with one another.”
“And finally, "A few collections of essays on novelists or various aspects of fiction have been especially valuable because of the attitudes torwards fiction that subsume them:”
“The older I get, the less I want to subsume my entire life's work and hopes into some poor small person who would have done nothing to deserve the resentment I would surely feel.”
“A statement which so mischaracterised the nature of the relationship between any supporters and their national side that it threatened to subsume all legitimate definitions of trust into its black hole of idiocy.”
The Guardian: Why John Terry has done his 'fronting up' for the last time | Marina Hyde
“But in the world of professional cooking, learning requires you to subsume yourself and your ego in the undifferentiated mass that labors at the bottom of the kitchen hierarchy.”
“Ms. Sussman, who was born in England in 1961 but lives and works in Brooklyn, has the ability to subsume viewers in opulence with images as thick and sweet as molasses.”
“Technocratic bad ideas tend to co-opt and subsume the elites and those with money and power.”
What's Wrong With DeLong?, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
“Infact, after controlling for regional heterogeneity, any one of these three variables is sufficient to subsume the impact of regime type on wars, militarized interstate disputes (MIDs), and fatal disputes.”
Moral and Mental Development, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
“So how about we subsume “states rights” within the general concept of “subsidiarity”?”
“The truth about Custer --- which is to say one of the truths about him --- that Berger is getting at through Jack Crabb is that Custer was intensely charismatic and he had that ability charismatic leaders have of convincing other people to subsume their egos in his and to start seeing the world the way they do, as being all about and for them.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘subsume’.
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EN - fine scholarly language
exhort, accretion, twenty-nine, atrophy, additive, brilliantly, interreligious, empiricism, pathologic, limitless, half-century, vigilant and 488 more...
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allover
reintegrate, spight, surveillant, harmonize, Colophon, workplace, bigoted, unsighted, bridgework, salutation, voltmeter, octane and 159 more...
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GRE Barron's 800
zealot, wistful, welter, wary, whimsical, warranted, vortex, vivisection, volatile, vitiate, viscous, visage and 787 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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Words from Blood Meridian
visage, affray, scullery, miasma, mirth, purlieu, tacit, benighted, wickiup, corral, amble, accoutre and 210 more...
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common UA vocab. in US
Interesting, there is a traditional vocabulary of an Ukrainian, that differs from vocabulary of average American. It would be nice to explore it.
jackdaw, incongruous, cassock, vivid, magpie, humdrum, amongst, wonder, wandering, wheedling, wheedle, osseous and 368 more...
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Words build meanings from origins( et...
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 2046 more...
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Ayatollah's list
Trinkets of lexical goodness.
floccinaucinihili..., quomodocunquize, curmudgeon, illaqueate, ipsissimosity, heterochthonous, hakenkreuz, forisfamiliate, appropinquate, apodyopsis, baryphony, cachinnate and 146 more...
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Philosophic , etymology
every major discipline has uniquely developed esoteric nomenclature to facilitate interdisciplinary dissemination
quale , qualia, elegy, tacet, lexicon, annunciate, caste, eros, contrive, purlicue, irony, venacular, dilapidate and 567 more...
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Neologisms
'New' words.
neurogami, sexting, plussies, plussy, churnalism, hecka, greenwashing, greenwash, Blogistan, diactrize, subsume, cachebusting and 27 more...
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There's a word for it
catkin, pastiche, badonkadonk, biome, omphaloscopy, pogonophobia, reptation, anathema, xyst, commodify, commoditize, monetize and 68 more...
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Filter 1
Hard words level 1
besotted, altricial, consecrate, consternate, desuetude, detractor, dissolute, divisive, emaciated, enamored, ensconce, garishly and 76 more...
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Specificity
Words that have with subtly different meanings from other words.
vestibule, commoditize, commodify, monetize, corroborate, mezzanine, apposite, irony, calefacient, maxim, pandiculate, rarefaction and 39 more...
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scholarly writing words
decrement, replete, impel, iterative, subsume, tacit, vex, denote, impart, ascertain, coalesce, extant and 49 more...
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Go over
mollify, obstinate, obviate, occlude, onerous, obscure, paragon, pedantic, perfunctory, placate, placid, prodigal and 364 more...
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MiaLuthien's list ♥
gambit, prehensile, coquetry, impunity, genuflect, ensconce, clavicle, delude, beget, castigate, life caching, convoluted and 478 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for subsume.

jwjarvis Advanced societies invariably have subsumed whatever indigenous populations they've encountered Aug 29, 2010