postulate
noun · verb · adjective
Simple meaning
Something assumed without proof as being self-evident or generally accepted.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
pahschuhlaytSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈpɑstʃəleɪt
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
Something assumed without proof as being self-evident or generally accepted, especially when used as a basis for an argument. Sometimes distinguished from axioms as being relevant to a particular science or context, rather than universally true, and following from other axioms rather than being an absolute assumption.
A fundamental element; a basic principle.
A requirement; a prerequisite.
verb
To assume as a truthful or accurate premise or axiom, especially as a basis of an argument.
adjective
Postulated.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient
- Frequency
- Rare
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Something assumed without proof as being self-evident or generally accepted, especially when used as a basis for an argument. Sometimes distinguished from axioms as being relevant to a particular science or context, rather than universally true, and following from other axioms rather than being an absolute assumption.
Used this way, postulate is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in science contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Science
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
The difficulty of applying Bayes' theorem is that the probabilities of the different causes are seldom known, in which case it may be postulated that they are all equal (sometimes known as…
Any of five axioms that are generally recognized as the basis for Euclidean geometry.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
- axiomnoun
- relativitynoun
- invariantnoun
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.