Word.ws English Dictionary

Hume's fork

Hume's fork proper noun: a tenet asserting that all statements are exclusively either "analytic a priori" (universally true by mere definition) or "synthetic a posteriori" (unknowable without exact experience).

Proper noun

Hume's fork

  1. A tenet asserting that all statements are exclusively either "analytic a priori" (universally true by mere definition) or "synthetic a posteriori" (unknowable without exact experience).
    • Hume's Fork would belong to the category of sophistry and illusion. As Hume's Fork is presented as a tool with which knowable propositions can be distinguished from nonsensical ones, critics need to show that the two categories of knowable propositions are inadequate, or that nonsensical...2020, Jean-Etienne Joullié, Robert Spillane, The Philosophical Foundations of Management Thought, Lexington Books, →ISBN, page 105

Forms of Hume's fork

alternative formHume's Fork

Origin of Hume's fork

Named after philosopher David Hume (1711–1776).

Questions about Hume's fork

What does Hume's fork mean?
Hume's fork means a tenet asserting that all statements are exclusively either "analytic a priori" (universally true by mere definition) or "synthetic a posteriori" (unknowable without exact experience).
What part of speech is Hume's fork?
Hume's fork is a proper noun.

Words near Hume's fork in the dictionary

  1. humdudgeons
  2. humdurgeon
  3. Hume
  4. Hume's boobook
  5. Hume's boobooks
  6. Hume's fork
  7. Hume's guillotine
  8. Hume's law
  9. Hume's leaf warbler
  10. Hume's leaf warblers
  11. Humean

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Hume's fork (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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