Definitions

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

  • adjective Relying on or derived from observation or experiment.
  • adjective Verifiable or provable by means of observation or experiment.
  • adjective Guided by practical experience and not theory, especially in medicine.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Pertaining to or derived from experience or experiments; depending upon or derived from the observation of phenomena.
  • as a general proposition, from a narrow range of observation, without any warrant for its exactitude or for its wider validity.
  • Pertaining to the medical practice of an empiric, in either of the medical senses of that word; hence, charlatanical; quackish.

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

  • adjective Pertaining to or based on experience.
  • adjective Pertaining to, derived from, or testable by observations made using the physical senses or using instruments which extend the senses.
  • adjective philosophy of science Verifiable by means of scientific experimentation.

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

  • adjective relying on medical quackery
  • adjective derived from experiment and observation rather than theory

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From empiric +‎ -al.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word empirical.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • Knowledge by revelation is more like empirical than rational knowledge.

    C.S. Lewis, "Bulverism"

    November 23, 2011