Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The mental act, condition, or habit of placing trust or confidence in another.
- noun Mental acceptance of and conviction in the truth, actuality, or validity of something.
- noun Something believed or accepted as true, especially a particular tenet or a body of tenets accepted by a group of persons.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Confidence reposed in any person or thing; faith; trust: as, a child's belief in his parents.
- noun A conviction of the truth of a given proposition or an alleged fact, resting upon grounds insufficient to constitute positive knowledge.
- noun Persuasion of the truth of a proposition, but with the consciousness that the positive evidence for it is insufficient or wanting; especially, assurance of the truth of what rests chiefly or solely upon authority.
- noun That which is believed; an object of belief.
- noun The whole body of tenets held by the professors of any faith.
- noun A creed; a formula embodying the essential doctrines of a religion or a church.
- noun Synonyms and Opinion, Conviction, etc. (see
persuasion ); credence, trust, credit, confidence. Doctrine.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun Assent to a proposition or affirmation, or the acceptance of a fact, opinion, or assertion as real or true, without immediate personal knowledge; reliance upon word or testimony; partial or full assurance without positive knowledge or absolute certainty; persuasion; conviction; confidence.
- noun (Theol.) A persuasion of the truths of religion; faith.
- noun The thing believed; the object of belief.
- noun A tenet, or the body of tenets, held by the advocates of any class of views; doctrine; creed.
- noun a first principle incapable of proof; an intuitive truth; an intuition.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun
Mental acceptance of aclaim astruth regardless of supporting or contraryempirical evidence . - noun countable Something
believed . - noun uncountable The quality or state of
believing . - noun uncountable
Religious faith . - noun in the plural One's religious or
moral convictions .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a vague idea in which some confidence is placed
- noun any cognitive content held as true
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Just as the significance of belief in God can vary with social context, with the result that it can make little sense to think of ˜belief in God™ as a meme, so the function of some DNA sequence can vary with organic context, with the result that it makes little sense to identify some sequence type as a gene for the purposes of evolutionary analysis.
Cultural Evolution Lewens, Tim 2007
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The belief that God, or a group of gods, is identical with the whole natural world; pantheism comes from Greek roots meaning belief that everything is a god.
pantheism 2002
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If there is a complex unity 'Desdemona's love for Cassio', consisting of the object-terms related by the object-relation in the same order as they have in the belief, then this complex unity is called the _fact corresponding to the belief_.
The Problems of Philosophy Bertrand Russell 1921
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In spite of the fact that in these days the personality of God is often regarded as a transient feature of religion, that type of belief which throws most light upon the religious experience is the _belief in persons_.
The Approach to Philosophy Ralph Barton Perry 1916
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A belief in judicial astrology can now only exist in the people, who may be said to have no belief at all; for mere traditional sentiments can hardly be said to amount to a _belief_.
Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) Isaac Disraeli 1807
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I would like to propose that belief in God is simply that - * belief*.
open source theology - collaborative theology for the emerging church drbellamy 2009
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_particular belief of their writers_ their true interpretation, I would make the _belief of the Catholic Church such_.
Apologia Pro Vita Sua John Henry Newman 1845
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Tract, addressed to Dr. Jelf, I say: "The only peculiarity of the view I advocate, if I must so call it, is this -- that whereas it is usual at this day to make the _particular belief of their writers_ their true interpretation, I would make the _belief of the Catholic
Apologia pro Vita Sua John Henry Newman 1845
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Although we use the term belief in everyday life with little problems, it is actually incredibly hard to define with some schools of thought thinking it will eventually be discarded as useless, like other abandoned theories such the four humours theory of medicine.
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Although we use the term belief in everyday life with little problems, it is actually incredibly hard to define with some schools of thought thinking it will eventually be discarded as useless, like other abandoned theories such the four humours theory of medicine.
georgegerharz commented on the word belief
Just a general question prompted by my search for "belief".
Are there certain definitions that have different or more specialized meanings? Belief, for example, is one thing in religion, another in psychology.
If so, how do you address this or plan to address it in the future.
Thanks
George
ggerharz@aol.com
April 19, 2009
writer723 commented on the word belief
belief:
–noun
The mental act, condition, or habit of placing trust or confidence in another: My belief in you is as strong as ever.
April 17, 2011