Definitions

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

  • adjective Dependent on or taking place in a person's mind rather than the external world.
  • adjective Based on a given person's experience, understanding, and feelings; personal or individual.
  • adjective Psychology Not caused by external stimuli.
  • adjective Medicine Of, relating to, or designating a symptom or complaint perceived by a patient.
  • adjective Expressing or bringing into prominence the individuality of the artist or author.
  • adjective Grammar Relating to or being the nominative case.
  • adjective Relating to the real nature of something; essential.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • In grammar: In Eskimo, noting the case expressing the subject of a transitive verb and the owner of an object. Also called transitive.
  • In other American languages, noting the case expressing the subject of a transitive or intransitive verb: used in languages in which these two forms are identical. Also called agentialis.
  • Relating to or of the nature of a subject, as opposed to an object.
  • In literature and art, noting a production characterized by the prominence given to the individuality of the author or artist: as, the subjective school of painting; also, relating to such individuality. The writings of Shelley and Byron are essentially subjective, while the novels of Scott are objective.
  • Relating to a subject in a political sense; submissive; obedient.

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

  • adjective Of or pertaining to a subject.
  • adjective Especially, pertaining to, or derived from, one's own consciousness, in distinction from external observation; ralating to the mind, or intellectual world, in distinction from the outward or material excessively occupied with, or brooding over, one's own internal states.
  • adjective (Lit. & Art) Modified by, or making prominent, the individuality of a writer or an artist.
  • adjective (Physiol.) one of the sensations occurring when stimuli due to internal causes excite the nervous apparatus of the sense organs, as when a person imagines he sees figures which have no objective reality.

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

  • adjective Pertaining to subjects as opposed to objects (A subject is one who perceives or is aware; an object is the thing perceived or the thing that the subject is aware of.)
  • adjective Formed, as in opinions, based upon a person's feelings or intuition, not upon observation or reasoning; coming more from within the observer than from observations of the external environment.
  • adjective Resulting from or pertaining to personal mindsets or experience, arising from perceptive mental conditions within the brain and not necessarily from external stimuli.
  • adjective Lacking in reality or substance.
  • adjective As used by Carl Jung the innate worldview orientation of the introverted personality types.
  • adjective philosophy, psychology Experienced by a person mentally and not directly verifiable by others

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

  • adjective of a mental act performed entirely within the mind
  • adjective taking place within the mind and modified by individual bias

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Laurence Urdang The phenomenon for which D.S. Bland proposes the term subjective onomatopoeia [XII, 2] has been examined and discussed for decades by a number of linguists and critics, including Otto Jespersen (with examples such as those of the - ump family cited by Bland), Edward S.pir (the ici and lá vowel contrast that Bland picks up from French), R.ssell Ultan (size and distance symbolism in general), J.R. Firth, Fred W. Householder, Jr.,

    VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol XIII No 3 1986

  • In view of this usage we are confronted with the passages in which the Latin word subjective must be translated as “objectively.”

    The Political Ideas of St. Thomas Aquinas Dino Bigongiari 1997

  • There are, however, what we call subjective factors.

    CHILE VISIT 1971

  • Do we mean to ... affirm, in language savouring strongly of scholasticism, that beneath the phenomena which we call subjective there is an occult substratum Mind, and beneath the phenomena which we call objective there is an occult substratum Matter?

    A Candid Examination of Theism George John Romanes 1871

  • Hofstadter is advocating no such thing as the objective view of history, only that some viewpoints can be verified while others will forever remain subjective, as they are not bound by rationality.

    9/11 Truth and the Paranoid Style - Boing Boing 2009

  • How effective is the Burgess proposal - almost all elements of it result in subjective determination: abusive language; so the ticket scalper who asks me three times in a loud voice for my extra; does that fall under the abusive part of the ordinance.

    “No Matter How Many Moats You Have.” « PubliCola 2010

  • It is thus possible through Dewey's conception of aesthetic experience to affirm that "appreciation" of a work of art arises in subjective experience but is also directed toward an object of which it can be said that such qualities as "form" and "style" and even "meaning" objectively exist, although no particular aesthetic experience is likely to fully encompass all of the relevant elements of each.

    John Dewey's *Art as Experience* 2010

  • It is thus possible through Dewey's conception of aesthetic experience to affirm that "appreciation" of a work of art arises in subjective experience but is also directed toward an object of which it can be said that such qualities as "form" and "style" and even "meaning" objectively exist, although no particular aesthetic experience is likely to fully encompass all of the relevant elements of each.

    January 2010 2010

  • This allowed me to benchmark my organization in subjective and personal ways that otherwise would have been difficult.

    University of Florida 2010

  • Hofstadter is advocating no such thing as the objective view of history, only that some viewpoints can be verified while others will forever remain subjective, as they are not bound by rationality.

    9/11 Truth and the Paranoid Style - Boing Boing 2009

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