Definitions

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

  • transitive verb To reach (a conclusion) by reasoning.
  • transitive verb To infer from a general principle; reason deductively.
  • transitive verb To trace the origin or derivation of.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To lead forth or away; conduct.
  • To trace the course of; describe from first to last.
  • To draw; derive; trace.
  • 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.
  • To bring before a court of justice for decision.
  • To deduct.

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

  • transitive verb A Latinism To lead forth.
  • transitive verb obsolete To take away; to deduct; to subtract.
  • transitive verb 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.

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

  • verb transitive To reach a conclusion by applying rules of logic to given premises.
  • verb obsolete To take away; to deduct; to subtract.
  • verb obsolete To lead forth.

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

  • verb conclude by reasoning; in logic
  • verb reason by deduction; establish by deduction

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

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

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin deducere, "lead from or concerning", from de-, "of" or "concerning", ducere, "lead".

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Examples

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

    A Materialist Red Herring 2009

  • 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 2009

  • 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 2009

  • 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 2009

  • 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 Hal Duncan 2009

  • 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.

    Archive 2009-08-01 Hal Duncan 2009

  • 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 2010

  • 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… 2008

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

    Archive 2008-01-01 Jonathan 2008

  • 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 Prof. de Breeze 2008

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