Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The state of being inherent or of inhering; intrinsic existence.
  • noun The relation to its subject of an accident, or that which cannot exist out of a substance as subject. Thus, the relation of mortality to man is inherence.

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

  • noun The state of inhering; permanent existence in something; innateness; inseparable and essential connection.

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

  • noun The state of being inherent or permanently present in something; indwelling.

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

  • noun the state of inhering; the state of being a fixed characteristic

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Compare French inhérence.

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Examples

  • I mean that if anyone asks you, “What that is, the inherence of which makes the body hot?

    Phædo. Paras. 500-599 Plato 1909

  • I mean that if any one asks you "what that is, the inherence of which makes the body hot," you will reply not heat (this is what I call the safe and stupid answer), but fire, a far better answer, which we are now in a condition to give.

    The Dialogues of Plato, Translated into English with Analyses and Introductions, by B. Jowett. Plato 1871

  • If they adopt the second view of inherence, which is preferred by some metaphysical natural philosophers, and regard space and time as relations (contiguity in space or succession in time), abstracted from experience, though represented confusedly in this state of separation, they find themselves in that case necessitated to deny the validity of mathematical doctrines a priori in reference to real things (for example, in space) -- at all events their apodeictic certainty.

    The Critique of Pure Reason Immanuel Kant 1764

  • Now, if to this real in the substance we ascribe a particular existence (for example, to motion as an accident of matter), this existence is called inherence, in contradistinction to the existence of substance, which we call subsistence.

    The Critique of Pure Reason Immanuel Kant 1764

  • (_ante_, chap.i. § 5, and chap. ii § 4): Substance, whether as the foundation of attributes, or as genus and species, implies the predication of co-inherence, which is one mode of _Co-existence_.

    Logic Deductive and Inductive Carveth Read 1889

  • These forms of conjunction are as much parts of the tissue of experience as are the terms which they connect; and it is a great pragmatic achievement for recent idealism to have made the world hang together in these directly representable ways instead of drawing its unity from the 'inherence' of its parts -- whatever that may mean -- in an unimaginable principle behind the scenes.

    Pragmatism William James 1876

  • I remember a passage in Alain de Lille's medieval work, the Complaint of Nature, in which he describes sex entirely in syllogistic terms -- as in syllogisms minor and major terms are connected by a single middle terms, in sex minor terms and major terms are connected by a set series of middle terms starting with acquaintance, moving through kisses, and ending in mutual inherence.

    Argument in verse 2010

  • As if it imbibed a primordial inherence that is devoid of fascist overtones.

    FEATURE ARTICLE: ON THE PHILIPPINES' 2009 NATIONAL ARTIST AWARDS EILEEN 2009

  • The comparison to being Black is based only on immutability, not inherence nor being inheritable.

    The Volokh Conspiracy » Federal challenge to Prop 8: 2009

  • Davis mentions their equally possessing the divine essence, and their inability to disagree, but for him the main factor is that the three enjoy the relation of perichoresis, which he expounds as meaning “co-inherence, mutual indwelling, interpenetrating, merging” (2006, 72).

    Trinity Tuggy, Dale 2009

Comments

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  • Opposite of outtherence.

    January 20, 2013