entelechial
Syllables: en·tel·e·chialUK/ɛnˈtɛləˌki.əl/
entelechial adjective: of or pertaining to entelechy.
Adjective
entelechial (comparative more entelechial, superlative most entelechial)
- Of or pertaining to entelechy.
- And this process “would be ‘entelechial’ or ‘perfectionist’ in the ironic sense of the term, insofar as the sufferer was in effect striving to impose a ‘perfect’ form by using the key terms of his formative wound as a paradigm.”1979, Film/Psychology Review, volume 3, Pleasantville, N.Y.: Redgrave Publishing Company, page 37
- I am assuming that an entelechial "tendency" […] does exist for human beings – that human beings "tend" to act in accordance with a purpose (or telos) which exists within the mind of the specific human taking the action. […] What would be more entelechial in the Burkean sense than a "single word"...1998, Stan A. Lindsay, Implicit Rhetoric: Kenneth Burke's Extension of Aristotle's Concept of Entelechy, Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, →ISBN, pages 106 and 109
Examples of entelechial in a sentence
- Invoking Aristotelian intuition, we will characterize each being as projecting an "entelechial" design.2000, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Impetus and Equipoise in the Life-Strategies of Reason: Logos and Life: Book 4 [Analecta Husserliana: The...
- [E]ntelechy, or the entelechial motive, is a function of language and is rooted in history, in a verbal action by a human agent in a specific sociopolitical scene.2003, Kenneth Burke, edited by William H. Rueckert and Angelo Bonadonna, On Human Nature: A Gathering while Everything Flows, 1967–1984...
- Just as an acorn has the telos or entelechial potential to become an oak, so do ideas contain the seeds of their own transformation.2004, Herbert W. Simmons, “The Rhetorical Legacy of Kenneth Burke”, in Walter Jost, Wendy Olmsted, editors, A Companion to Rhetoric and...
- Could we not say that life proceeds in tandem with intrinsic prompting and invigorating entelechial energies, on the one hand, and the operative functional generation of force, on the other?2009, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, The Fullness of the Logos in the Key of Life: Book I. The Case of God in the New Enlightenment [Analecta...
Forms of entelechial
| comparative | more entelechial |
|---|---|
| superlative | most entelechial |
Origin of entelechial
From entelechy + -ial.
Questions about entelechial
- What does entelechial mean?
- Entelechial means of or pertaining to entelechy.
- How do you use entelechial in a sentence?
- Invoking Aristotelian intuition, we will characterize each being as projecting an "entelechial" design.
- What part of speech is entelechial?
- Entelechial is an adjective.
- How do you pronounce entelechial?
- Entelechial is pronounced /ɛnˈtɛləˌki.əl/ (UK).
Words near entelechial in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: entelechial (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “entelechial.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/entelechial. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.