"Probative" Quotes from Famous Books
... barometer; feel the pulse; fish for, bob for; cast for, beat about for; angle, trawl, cast one's net, beat the bushes. try one's fortune &c. (adventure) 675; explore &c. (inquire) 461. Adj. experimental, empirical. probative, probatory[obs3], probationary, provisional; analytic, docimastic[obs3]; tentative;unverified, unproven, speculative, untested. Adv. on trial, under examination, on probation, under probation, on one's trial, on approval. Phr. check it out, give it a try, see how it goes; "Run ... — Roget's Thesaurus
... Dante's own heavens, giving and receiving light.[76] Indeed, Dante himself is partly to blame for this. "The form or mode of treatment," he says, "is poetic, fictive, descriptive, digressive, transumptive, and withal definitive, divisive, probative, improbative, and positive of examples." Here are conundrums enough, to be sure! To Italians at home, for whom the great arenas of political and religious speculation were closed, the temptation to find a subtler meaning than the real one was irresistible. Italians ... — Among My Books • James Russell Lowell |