Definitions

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

  • noun The act or process of causing.
  • noun A cause.
  • noun Causality.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The act of causing or producing; the principle of causality; the relation of cause to effect, or of effect to cause.

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

  • noun The act of causing; also the act or agency by which an effect is produced.
  • noun the theoretical or asserted law that every event or phenomenon results from, or is the sequel of, some previous event or phenomenon, which being present, the other is certain to take place.

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

  • noun The act of causing; also the act or agency by which an effect is produced.

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

  • noun the act of causing something to happen

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From cause +‎ -ation

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Examples

Comments

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  • One day the Eccentric was walking along an alleyway when a man fell from a rooftop and landed on him. The other man was unhurt, but the Eccentric was taken to the hospital.

    Later, one of his sons asked him, "Father, you have told us that life itself should be an education, and that a wise man can learn a lesson from any event, but tell me, what can be learned from this occurrence?"

    And the Eccentric answered, "Avoid all theoretical discussion concerning 'cause and effect' and place no faith in the outcome of logical sequence. How can one waste his time speculating on questions such as: 'If a man falls from the roof, will his neck be broken?' The other man fell, but my neck is broken." --"Magnus Machina" by Jan Cox p.130

    January 17, 2008