Word.ws English Dictionary

Paley's watch

Paley's watch proper noun: a hypothetical pocket watch found lying on a heath, taken to be too complex to be formed by natural forces and therefore created by some entity; used in arguments for the existence of a creator God.

Proper noun

Paley's watch

  1. A hypothetical pocket watch found lying on a heath, taken to be too complex to be formed by natural forces and therefore created by some entity; used in arguments for the existence of a creator God.

Origin of Paley's watch

Famously mentioned in a book by William Paley in 1802, though he was not the originator.

Questions about Paley's watch

What does Paley's watch mean?
Paley's watch means a hypothetical pocket watch found lying on a heath, taken to be too complex to be formed by natural forces and therefore created by some entity; used in arguments for the existence of a creator God.
What part of speech is Paley's watch?
Paley's watch is a proper noun.

Words near Paley's watch in the dictionary

  1. paletôt
  2. paletôts
  3. paleways
  4. palewise
  5. Paley
  6. Paley's watch
  7. palfrey
  8. palfreyed
  9. palfreyman
  10. palfreys
  11. Palghar

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Paley's watch (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “Paley's watch.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/paley%27s_watch. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.