Definitions

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

  • noun Something that logically or naturally follows from an action or condition. synonym: effect.
  • noun A logical conclusion or inference.
  • noun Importance in rank or position.
  • noun Significance; importance: synonym: importance.
  • idiom (in consequence) As a result; consequently.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Connection of cause and effect, or of antecedent and consequent; consecution.
  • noun That which follows from or grows out of any act, cause, proceeding, or series of actions; an event or effect produced by some preceeding influence, action, act, or cause; a consequent; a result.
  • noun The conclusion of a syllogism.
  • noun A consequent inference; deduction; specifically, in logic, a form of inference or aspect under which any inference may be regarded, having but one premise, the antecedent, and one conclusion, the consequent, the principle according to which the consequent follows from the antecedent being, like the whole inference, termed the consequence.
  • noun Importance; moment; significance: applied to things: as, this is a matter of consequence, or of some, little, great, or no consequence.
  • noun Importance; influence; distinction; note: applied to persons: as, a man of consequence.
  • noun plural A game in which one player writes down an adjective, the second the name of a man, the third an adjective, the fourth the name of a woman, the fifth what he said, the sixth what she said, the seventh the consequence, etc., etc., no one seeing what the others have written. After all have written, the paper is read.
  • noun Synonyms Result, Issue, etc. See effect.
  • To draw inferences; form deductions.
  • noun In astronomy, motion from an earlier to a later sign of the zodiac, or from west to east; direct motion.

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

  • noun That which follows something on which it depends; that which is produced by a cause; a result.
  • noun (Logic) A proposition collected from the agreement of other previous propositions; any conclusion which results from reason or argument; inference.
  • noun Chain of causes and effects; consecution.
  • noun Importance with respect to what comes after; power to influence or produce an effect; value; moment; rank; distinction.
  • noun hence; for this cause.
  • noun by reason of; as the effect of.

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

  • noun That which follows something on which it depends; that which is produced by a cause.
  • noun A result of actions.
  • noun A proposition collected from the agreement of other previous propositions; any conclusion which results from reason or argument; inference.
  • noun Chain of causes and effects; consecution.
  • noun Importance with respect to what comes after.
  • noun The power to influence or produce an effect.
  • noun importance, value, or influence
  • verb transitive To threaten or punish (a child, etc.) with specific consequences for misbehaviour.

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

  • noun a phenomenon that follows and is caused by some previous phenomenon
  • noun the outcome of an event especially as relative to an individual
  • noun having important effects or influence

Etymologies

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