presupposition

noun
/pɹiː.sʌ.pəˈzɪ.ʃ(ə)n/UK

Etymology

From Middle French présupposition, from Latin praesuppositio, from the past participle stem of praesuppōnere (“to presuppose”).

  1. derived from praesuppositio
  2. derived from présupposition

Definitions

  1. An assumption made beforehand

    An assumption made beforehand; a preliminary conjecture or speculation.

    • He made one cardinal error in his presuppositions about the relation between language and perception, but in this he was far from alone.
  2. The act of presupposing.

  3. An assumption or belief implicit in an utterance or other use of language.

    • For instance: a verb might convey someone's evaluation of it as a presupposition. To say ‘they deprived him of a visit to his parents’ presupposes that he wanted to visit (vs. ‘spare him a visit...’).

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for presupposition. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA