English Explanatory Dictionary

principle

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. A fundamental assumption or guiding belief.
  2. A rule used to choose among solutions to a problem.
  3. Moral rule or aspect.
  4. A rule or law of nature, or the basic idea on how the laws of nature are applied.
  5. A fundamental essence, particularly one producing a given quality.
  6. A chemical compound within plant or animal tissue that is characteristic of it and more or less peculiar to it, such that it defines the character of that tissue from a human viewpoint (as for example nicotine in tobacco).
  7. A source, or origin; that from which anything proceeds; fundamental substance or energy; primordial substance; ultimate element, or cause.
  8. An original faculty or endowment.
  9. Misspelling of principal.
  10. A beginning.
verb
  1. To equip with principles; to establish, or fix, in certain principles; to impress with any tenet or rule of conduct.

Pronunciation

/ˈpɹɪn.sɪ.pəl/ [ˈpɹɪn.sɪ.pɫ̩] /ˈpɹɪn.sə.pəl/ [ˈpɹɪn.sə.pɫ̩] en-us-principle.ogg

Word forms

principle principles principling principled

Etymology

From Middle English principle, from Old French principe, from Latin prīncipium (“beginning, foundation”), from prīnceps (“first”). By surface analysis, prīmus (“first”) + -ceps (“catcher”); the former ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *preh₂- (“before”); see also prince.

Synonyms

premise tenet

Related words

prince principal principality

Derived words

acceleration principle agreement in principle Anna Karenina principle anthropic principle antiprinciple Archimedes' principle arm's length principle aufbau principle Babinet's principle BANANA principle Bernoulli's principle Bridlington principle Cavalieri's principle Chicago principles composite reuse principle context principle cooperative principle Copernican principle Copernican time principle correspondence principle cosmological principle counterprinciple Courant minimax principle d'Alembert's principle day-year principle dependency inversion principle desert principle Dilbert principle Dirichlet's box principle Dirichlet's drawer principle dormitive principle equivalence principle extractive principle Fermat's principle Fermat's principle of least time Fick principle first principle first principles four-eye principle Franck-Condon principle Goldilocks principle Haldane principle handicap principle Hardy-Weinberg principle harm principle Heisenberg principle Heisenberg uncertainty principle Hollywood principle holographic principle Huygens-Fresnel principle Huygens' principle IBM Pollyanna Principle indeterminacy principle in principle interface segregation principle Kerckhoffs's principle KISS principle Lagrange-d'Alembert principle Landauer's principle Le Châtelier's principle
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