Word.ws English Dictionary

explicans

explicans noun: the underlying meaning of an explicandum.

Noun

explicans (plural explicantia)

  1. The underlying meaning of an explicandum.
    • Thus when a function statement gives the explicandum, e.g. alcohol consumption, privileged joking, witchcraft inheritance, as a sufficient condition of the explicans (anxiety reduction, friendly relations, agnatic confidence), a law statement can easily be framed on this basis.1963, Robert Brown, Explanation in Social Science (The International Library of Sociology & Social Reconstruction), London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, published 1968, →ISBN, page 122
    • The explicans in such an explanation is an event the occurrence of which possessing a certain property, in conjunction with other events with suitable properties, nomically determines the occurrence of the explicandum-event with a certain property.1968, Richard Bevan Braithwaite, Scientific Explanation: A Study of the Function of Theory, Probability and Law in Science, Cambridge: At the University Press, page 321

Forms of explicans

pluralexplicantia

Origin of explicans

From Latin explicāns.

Questions about explicans

What does explicans mean?
Explicans means the underlying meaning of an explicandum.
What part of speech is explicans?
Explicans is a noun.
What is the plural of explicans?
The plural of explicans is explicantia.

Words near explicans in the dictionary

  1. explicable
  2. explicableness
  3. explicably
  4. explicanda
  5. explicandum
  6. explicans
  7. explicantia
  8. explicata
  9. explicatable
  10. explicate
  11. explicated

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: explicans (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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