Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Without exception; incapable of being excepted to.

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

  • adjective Without exception.

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

  • adjective without exception

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From exception + -less ("denoting lack or absence of something"). Compare the Icelandic undantekningarlaus ("without exception").

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Examples

  • Can we mock the pretension of "exceptionless equality" while still struggling toward some kind of personal evaluative standard?

    Dear Dean, How to Start? Craig Fehrman 2010

  • To conceive of it as it is in itself, under a description uncontaminated by any reference to human observational capacities, would be to conceive of an immensely detailed complex of mathematical structures, evolving in time in accordance with exceptionless or probabilistic laws.

    Backing Into an Evidentiary Standard for ID 2007

  • On this deductive-nomological account (Hempel and Oppenheim 1948), an explanation of particular observation statements was analyzed as subsumption under universal (applying throughout the universe), general (exceptionless), necessary (not contingent) laws of nature plus the initial conditions of the particular case.

    Molecular Biology Darden, Lindley 2009

  • No purported “law” in biology has been found to be exceptionless, even for life on earth (in conflict with the generality of laws).

    Molecular Biology Darden, Lindley 2009

  • Again, consider an exceptionless law against desertion from the battlefield in time of war.

    The Spirit Upwelling Linda Boroff 2009

  • However the Neogrammarian Hypothesis regarding sound shifts that they are regular and exceptionless has allowes us to elucidate the genetic relationships between languages, poetic elements, and so forth to a degree not otherwise possible.

    The Volokh Conspiracy » Thirty Years in America: 2009

  • Hypothesis #1: The statement is intended as an exceptionless claim - i.e., "No waitress is smart."

    The Mystery of Classism, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009

  • But perhaps there are no true exceptionless 'laws of nature'.

    A Third Choice (ID Hypothesis) 2007

  • Even if you think that it vests individuals with some right or other, no one thinks that right is exceptionless and unqualilfied – even the NRA agrees to the ‘no nukes’ exception, and will probably live with the ‘no conventional ICBMs’ restriction, too.

    Matthew Yglesias » Gun Lovin’ Liberals 2007

  • Against Method explicitly drew the “epistemological anarchist” conclusion that there are no useful and exceptionless methodological rules governing the progress of science or the growth of knowledge.

    Paul Feyerabend Preston, John 2009

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