absolute
Pronunciation: /ˈæb.sə.luːt/
The English word “absolute” has 20 meanings listed here.
adjective
- Free of restrictions, limitations, qualifications or conditions; unconditional.
- Unrestricted by laws, a constitution, or parliamentary or judicial or other checks; (legally) unlimited in power, especially if despotic.
- Characteristic of an absolutist ruler: domineering, peremptory.
- Free from imperfection, perfect, complete; especially, perfectly embodying a quality in its essential characteristics or to its highest degree.
- Pure, free from mixture or adulteration; unmixed.
- Complete, utter, outright; unmitigated, not qualified or diminished in any way.
- Positive, certain; unquestionable; not in doubt.
- Certain; free from doubt or uncertainty (e.g. a person, opinion or prediction).
- Fundamental, ultimate, intrinsic; not relative; independent of references or relations to other things or standards.
- Independent of arbitrary units of measurement, standards, or properties; not comparative or relative.
- Having reference to or derived in the simplest manner from the fundamental units of mass, time, and length.
- Relating to the absolute temperature scale (based on absolute zero); kelvin.
- Syntactically connected to the rest of the sentence in an atypical manner, or not relating to or depending on it, like in the nominative absolute or genitive absolute, accusative absolute or ablative absolute.
- Lacking a modified substantive, like "hungry" in "feed the hungry".
- Expressing a relative term without a definite comparison, like "older" in "an older person should be treated with respect".
- Positive; not graded (not comparative or superlative).
- Having no direct object, like "kill" in "if looks could kill".
- Being or pertaining to an inflected verb that is not preceded by any number of particles or compounded with a preverb.
- As measured using an absolute value.
- Indicating an expression that is true for all real numbers, or of all values of the variable; unconditional.
Etymology
First attested around 1380. From Middle English absolut, from Middle French absolut, from Latin absolūtus (“unconditional; unfettered; completed”), perfect passive participle of absolvō (“loosen, set free, complete”), from ab (“away”) + solvo (“to loose”). Influenced in part by Old French absolu. Compare absolve.
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More English words
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- Absolute
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- absolute advantage
- absolute alcohol
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About this dictionary
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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.