Word.ws English Dictionary

posit

/ˈpɒzɪt/US/ˈpɑzɪt/

posit noun: something that is posited; a postulate. Also the abbreviation of position.

Noun

posit (plural posits)

  1. Something that is posited; a postulate.
  2. A number format representing a real number consisting of a sign bit, a variable-size "regime" part (which modifies the exponent), up to two exponent bits, and a fraction part, proposed as a more efficient alternative to IEEE 754 floats in AI applications.
    • With their new hardware implementation, which was synthesized in a field-programmable gate array (FPGA), the Complutense team was able to compare computations done using 32-bit floats and 32-bit posits side by side.2022 September 25, Dina Genkina, “Posits, a New Kind of Number, Improves the Math of AI”, in IEEE Spectrum, New York, N.Y.: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived...

Verb

posit (third-person singular simple present posits, present participle positing, simple past and past participle posited)

  1. To assume the existence of; to postulate.
    • some who posit both this cause and besides this the source of movement, which we have got from some as single and from other as twofold.1908, ARISTOTLE, translated by W. D. Ross, Metaphysics, Book 1, Part 5
  2. To propose for consideration or study; to suggest.
    • Ray's natural theology posited that God was responsible for the near-perfect match between an animal and its environment and encouraged readers to seek evidence for God through the study of nature.2023, Tim Birkhead, Birds and Us, Penguin Books, page 193
  3. To put (something somewhere) firmly; to place or position.
    • Among many Indians, however, an exonormative view, which even today posits British English as the target model, appears to be firmly in place.2014, James Lambert, “Diachronic stability in Indian English lexis”, in World Englishes, page 113

Also used as

posit is also the abbreviation of position.

Examples of posit in a sentence

  • Critics of contemporary culture generally posit a steep decline in cultural literacy.
  • Her theory posits that secular religions will rush in to fill the cultural void left by the decline of religiosity.
  • Airships are posited to be cheaper to operate over time than fixed-wing aircraft, but as there are no large fleets, this is hard to prove in practice.

All 40 example sentences with posit

Forms of posit

Noun
pluralposits
Verb
third-person singular presentposits
present participlepositing
past participleposited
pastposited

Past tense of posit: posited

Plural of posit: posits

Origin of posit

Borrowed from Latin positus, perfect participle of pōnō (“put, place”). Noun sense 3 (type of number format) was coined by American computer scientist and businessman John Gustafson in 2017.

Words formed from posit

Words that rhyme with posit

Questions about posit

What does posit mean?
Posit means something that is posited; a postulate.
What part of speech is posit?
Posit can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce posit?
Posit is pronounced /ˈpɒzɪt/ (UK).
What is the plural of posit?
The plural of posit is posits.

Words near posit in the dictionary

  1. Posio
  2. posish
  3. posishes
  4. posistor
  5. posistors
  6. posit
  7. POSITA
  8. posited
  9. positer
  10. positers
  11. positeth

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: posit (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-posit.wav.

Cite this entry: “posit.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/posit. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.