POSTULATE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Postulate

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/pˈɑstʃəlˌeɪt/ /pˈɑstʃələt/ Listen

verb

Postulate v. t. (past & past part. postulated; pres. part. postulating)

To beg, or assume without proof; as, to postulate conclusions.

To take without express consent; to assume. "The Byzantine emperors appear to have... postulated a sort of paramount supremacy over this nation."

To invite earnestly; to solicit. (Obs.)

noun

Postulate n.

Something demanded or asserted; especially, a position or supposition assumed without proof, or one which is considered as self-evident; a truth to which assent may be demanded or challenged, without argument or evidence.

(Geom.) The enunciation of a self-evident problem, in distinction from an axiom, which is the enunciation of a self-evident theorem. "The distinction between a postulate and an axiom lies in this, that the latter is admitted to be self-evident, while the former may be agreed upon between two reasoners, and admitted by both, but not as proposition which it would be impossible to deny."

adjective

Postulate adj. Postulated. (Obs.)

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Etymology of 'Postulate'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Postulate" Quotes from Famous Books

... [204] Hall's postulate is, that God's work could not admit of any substantial change, which is above the reach of all infernal powers; but "Herein the divell plays the double sophister; the sorcerer with sorcerers. Hee both deludes the witch's conceit ...

— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... conceived in a personal form as witches, demons, and monsters, or in an impersonal form as a sort of pervading taint or corruption of the air. This is the view of Dr. Edward Westermarck and apparently of Professor Eugen Mogk. It may be called the purificatory theory. Obviously the two theories postulate two very different conceptions of the fire which plays the principal part in the rites. On the one view, the fire, like sunshine in our latitude, is a genial creative power which fosters the growth of plants and the development of all that ...

— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... composition, in these things, I may mention, was reversed by the order of publication; the earlier written of the two books having appeared as the later.) Even under the weight of my hero's years I could feel my postulate firm; even under the strain of the difference between those of Madame de Vionnet and those of Chad Newsome, a difference liable to be denounced as shocking, I could still feel it serene. Nothing resisted, nothing betrayed, I seem to make out, in this full and sound sense of the ...

— The Ambassadors • Henry James

... postpones the result to an after-life. There is in nature a system of reward and punishment which everyone must have observed because it is part of the universal sequence of cause and effect; but these two phases of religion carry the idea still farther; they postulate rewards and punishments of a supernatural character, over and above those which naturally occur. It is important to note that in neither of these systems is God essentially involved. They are in reality independent of the idea of God, since that ...

— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson

... postulates, it never has, and never will, change a postulate. And a religious belief is a system of postulates ... so how can a man fight a native superstition with ...

— Oomphel in the Sky • Henry Beam Piper

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