Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Generally regarded as such; supposed.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Supposed; reputed; commonly thought or deemed: as, the putative father of a child.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Commonly thought or deemed; supposed; reputed.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Commonly
believed ordeemed to be the case; accepted bysupposition rather than as a result ofproof .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective purported; commonly put forth or accepted as true on inconclusive grounds
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Sarah Palin and Rudy Giuliani showed up in New Hampshire on the former Massachusetts governor's magical day, underscoring why Romney is plagued by the word "putative," which almost always appears before "front-runner."
The Washington Post: National, World & D.C. Area News and Headlines - The Washington Post E.J. Dionne Jr. 2011
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I think the major problem with Europe today is a lack of democracy, even in putative democratic countries.
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Just because I disagree with a certain putative means to reduce the number of abortions (and it is hardly well established that government distribution of birth control reduces the number of abortions), it does not follow that I am not actually prolife.
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Others, like William of Conches and the Arabic doctors, demonstrated an interest in putative astrological influences on the fetus's development. 42 But by the mid-thirteenth century, Vincent of Beauvais followed his source, the Cistercian Helinand of Froidmont, a twelfth-century critic of astrology, and strongly attacked the belief in the planets 'power to determine sex differentiation in the womb. 43 Medical writers generally avoided the question of celestial interference and concentrated on the positive and negative influences of terrestrial bodies, especially the maternal body encasing the fetus.
A Tender Age: Cultural Anxieties over the Child in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries 2005
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Coburn, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia and Mike Crapo of Idaho, calling the putative deal a blatant violation of the group's "no new taxes" pledge, which most Republican lawmakers have signed.
Talks to Cut Deficit Stumble Jonathan Weisman 2011
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Later Iran would be increasingly identified as a putative rationale for extending it into the Persian
PSI, US 1,000-Ship Navy: Control Of World's Oceans, Prelude To War 2009
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In essence, the current evolutionary approach is goal-oriented, namely the putative fitness advantage of future generations is taken as the goal.
Albert de Roos: A design hypothesis for the evolution of the nucleus 2006
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In essence, the current evolutionary approach is goal-oriented, namely the putative fitness advantage of future generations is taken as the goal.
Albert de Roos: A design hypothesis for the evolution of the nucleus 2006
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Perhaps the specter of losing the nomination after being dubbed the putative front runner, or of gaining the nomination in a bitterly divisive nomination contest then losing the presidency, might be likened to a Pyrrhic victory.
Gloria Feldt: Which Greek Tragedy are Hillary and Bill Enacting? 2008
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According to Bondi's theory, the universe as far back into the past as we might look would always look the same; there was no evolution, there could be no “fossils”, as Bondi called putative evidence of a universe different in the past from our present one.
Cosmology: Methodological Debates in the 1930s and 1940s Gale, George 2007
nell_nelson commented on the word putative
Something both repels and attracts to this word, me-putes.
November 10, 2009
bilby commented on the word putative
You can pute that again.
November 10, 2009
eyang commented on the word putative
The putative lover he accused him of seeing.
June 14, 2010