Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Of, relating to, or resembling an axiom; self-evident.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Of the nature of an axiom, self-evident truth, or received principle; self-evident.
  • Full of axioms or maxims; aphoristic.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Of or pertaining to an axiom; having the nature of an axiom; self-evident; characterized by axioms.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Evident without proof or argument.
  • adjective Of or pertaining to an axiom.
  • adjective informal Obvious.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective containing aphorisms or maxims
  • adjective of or relating to or derived from axioms
  • adjective evident without proof or argument

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Ancient Greek ἀξιωματικός (aksiōmatikos), in turn from ἀξίωμα (aksiōma)

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Examples

  • ‡ The term axiomatic is used generally to refer to a statement so obvious that it needs no proof.

    axiom 2002

  • Therefore in speculative matters the same truth holds among all men both as to principles and as to conclusions, even though all men do not discern this truth in the conclusions but only in those principles which are called axiomatic notions.

    The Political Ideas of St. Thomas Aquinas Dino Bigongiari 1997

  • I would prefer to see them described as axiomatic, and that they are not consistent with any medical concept of which I am aware.

    Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium - Recent changes [en] 2008

  • It cannot be denied that our "think so's," "feel so's," impressions, prejudices and inherited or preconceived ideas may seem as infallible to us as any so-called axiomatic or intuitive truths.

    To Infidelity and Back

  • Maybe you and I use the word "axiomatic" differently, but Field got his 3-act structure from reading 2,000 screenplays and seeing what separated the ones that got made from the ones that didn't.

    WoW-nnui 2006

  • Although in this book Newton affects a kind of axiomatic presentation beginning with definitions and axioms, and enunciating a series of propositions, the procedures are really analytic in his sense, as he tells us they are: the propositions are not abstract mathematical statements, but affirmations of physical or experimental fact, and they are justified, not by mathematical deduction, but by what he calls

    Dictionary of the History of Ideas HENRY GUERLAC 1968

  • McLintock! may be uncool but I'd much rather watch its cast brawling and mud-sliding across my screen than those Howard Hawks Rio El Dorado Lobo Geritol horse operas that all the auteurists hanging around the bingo hall find so "axiomatic," not to mention The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, which carries too much sand in its boots and drags considerable awful.

    the latest from teenvogue.com 2010

  • Even if those terms are "axiomatic," they should be explained or described, and the authors must refrain from constantly introducing new terms that may be ambiguous; rather they should repeat words that were already used and explained.

    Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium - Recent changes [en] 2008

  • 'axiomatic' statement made by some priests in support of the ordination of women: 'all I need

    unknown title 2009

  • 'axiomatic' statement made by some priests in support of the ordination of women: 'all I need

    unknown title 2009

Comments

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  • I want this word to have been used in John Agard's excellent 'Listen Mr Oxford Don'. But it isn't.

    April 30, 2009