| / English Dictionary |
PHILOSOPHIC
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Characterized by the attitude of a philosopher; meeting trouble with level-headed detachment
Example:
a philosophic attitude toward life
Synonyms:
philosophic; philosophical
Classified under:
Similar:
unemotional (unsusceptible to or destitute of or showing no emotion)
Derivation:
philosopher (a wise person who is calm and rational; someone who lives a life of reason with equanimity)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Of or relating to philosophy or philosophers
Example:
a considerable knowledge of philosophical terminology
Synonyms:
philosophic; philosophical
Classified under:
Relational adjectives (pertainyms)
Pertainym:
philosophy (the rational investigation of questions about existence and knowledge and ethics)
Derivation:
philosopher (a specialist in philosophy)
philosophy (the rational investigation of questions about existence and knowledge and ethics)
Context examples:
To a man of philosophic temperament like myself the blood-tick, with its lancet-like proboscis and its distending stomach, is as beautiful a work of Nature as the peacock or, for that matter, the aurora borealis.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
But Norton was no Spencerian, and he, too, strove for Martin's philosophic soul, talking as much at him as to his two opponents.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
He also possessed a philosophic bent, to the great delight of his grandfather, who used to hold Socratic conversations with him, in which the precocious pupil occasionally posed his teacher, to the undisguised satisfaction of the womenfolk.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
Waiving that point, however, and supposing her to be, as you describe her, only pretty and good-natured, let me tell you, that in the degree she possesses them, they are not trivial recommendations to the world in general, for she is, in fact, a beautiful girl, and must be thought so by ninety-nine people out of an hundred; and till it appears that men are much more philosophic on the subject of beauty than they are generally supposed; till they do fall in love with well-informed minds instead of handsome faces, a girl, with such loveliness as Harriet, has a certainty of being admired and sought after, of having the power of chusing from among many, consequently a claim to be nice.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
I can't do it any other way, for you are both congenitally unable to understand a philosophic abstraction.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
As he glanced from Jo to several other young people, attracted by the brilliancy of the philosophic pyrotechnics, he knit his brows and longed to speak, fearing that some inflammable young soul would be led astray by the rockets, to find when the display was over that they had only an empty stick or a scorched hand.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
"It is a most marvellous happening," Singletree, Darnley & Co. wrote Martin, a critical philosophic essay selling like a novel.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
Idealism led him to philosophic anarchy, and his family threw him off.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
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