Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- intransitive verb To reduce to a general form, class, or law.
- intransitive verb To render indefinite or unspecific.
- intransitive verb To infer from many particulars.
- intransitive verb To draw inferences or a general conclusion from.
- intransitive verb To make generally or universally applicable.
- intransitive verb To popularize.
- intransitive verb To form a concept inductively.
- intransitive verb To form general notions or conclusions.
- intransitive verb To deal in generalities; speak or write vaguely.
- intransitive verb Medicine To spread through the body. Used of a usually localized disease.
from The Century Dictionary.
- In painting, to render large and typical characteristics rather than details.
- To render general; make more general; bring under a general description or notion; treat or apply generically.
- To infer inductively, as a general rule from a particular case or set of facts.
- In mathematics, to modify, as a proposition, so as to obtain a wider proposition from which the former can be immediately deduced. See
generalization , 3 - To recognize that two or more objects have a common character; to form a general notion.
- To reason inductively, from particular cases to general rules comprehending those cases.
- Also spelled
generalise .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb To bring under a genus or under genera; to view in relation to a genus or to genera.
- transitive verb To apply to other genera or classes; to use with a more extensive application; to extend so as to include all special cases; to make universal in application, as a formula or rule.
- transitive verb To derive or deduce (a general conception, or a general principle) from particulars.
- transitive verb To speak in generalities; to talk in abstract terms.
- intransitive verb To form into a genus; to view objects in their relations to a genus or class; to take general or comprehensive views.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb To speak in
generalities , or in vague terms. - verb To
infer orinduce from specific cases to more general cases or principles. - verb To spread throughout the body and become
systemic .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb become systemic and spread throughout the body
- verb draw from specific cases for more general cases
- verb cater to popular taste to make popular and present to the general public; bring into general or common use
- verb speak or write in generalities
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Professor STEVE KOZLOWSKI (Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Michigan State University): And it's really very, very difficult to generalize from the small set of tasks that were examined in these studies, using college students, ad hoc teams, very short periods of measurement.
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Maybe modern conditions are so different that you can't generalize from the past.
What, Me Worry?, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009
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Professor STEVE KOZLOWSKI (Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Michigan State University): And it's really very, very difficult to generalize from the small set of tasks that were examined in these studies, using college students, ad hoc teams, very short periods of measurement.
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Professor STEVE KOZLOWSKI (Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Michigan State University): And it's really very, very difficult to generalize from the small set of tasks that were examined in these studies, using college students, ad hoc teams, very short periods of measurement.
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When you generalize from a random sample to a population, your inferences are highly likely to be correct.
Sampling Bias on a Plane, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009
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Professor STEVE KOZLOWSKI (Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Michigan State University): And it's really very, very difficult to generalize from the small set of tasks that were examined in these studies, using college students, ad hoc teams, very short periods of measurement.
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Maybe modern conditions are so different that you can't generalize from the past.
What, Me Worry?, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009
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Parents who generalize from the apparent contentedness of their own children are indulging a dangerous fallacy.
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Parents who generalize from the apparent contentedness of their own children are indulging a dangerous fallacy.
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I know its bad to generalize from a single experience, but adding my own several years of experience in Mexico to the mix, I can only conclude the following: private services exist only for people who have the money to pay for them, and in Mexico, private health services are outrageously expensive.
uselessness commented on the word generalize
One should never generalize.
January 25, 2007