Word.ws English Dictionary

presupposition

/pɹiː.sʌ.pəˈzɪ.ʃ(ə)n/

presupposition noun: an assumption made beforehand; a preliminary conjecture or speculation.

Noun

presupposition (countable and uncountable, plural presuppositions)

  1. An assumption made beforehand; a preliminary conjecture or speculation.
    • He made one cardinal error in his presuppositions about the relation between language and perception, but in this he was far from alone.2010, Guy Deutscher, Through the Language Glass, Arrow, published 2011, page 40
  2. The act of presupposing.
  3. An assumption or belief implicit in an utterance or other use of language.
    • For instance: a verb might convey someone's evaluation of it as a presupposition. To say ‘they deprived him of a visit to his parents’ presupposes that he wanted to visit (vs. ‘spare him a visit...’).1971, Paul Kiparsky, Carol Kiparsky, “Fact”, in Danny Steinberg, Leon Jakobovits, editors, Semantics: An Interdisciplinary Reader in Philosophy, Linguistics and Psychology, Cambridge: Cambridge...

presupposition meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Bengali and Malayalam

presupposition in Hindi

assumption, conjecture, speculation or something supposed without proof
पूर्वमान्यता pūrvamānyatā

presupposition in Tamil

முற்கோள், ஊகம் உரைத்தல்

presupposition in Bengali

পূর্বানুমান, পূর্বানুমান করার ক্রিয়া, প্রক্রিয়া

presupposition in Malayalam

മുൻകൂട്ടിയുള്ള തീരുമാനം
More languagesFewer languages
presupposition in Kannada
ಪೂರ್ವಕಲ್ಪನೆ, ಮುಂದಾಲೋಚನೆ, ಮುಂಭಾವನೆ
presupposition in Vietnamese
tiền giả định

Examples of presupposition in a sentence

  • The third pair of presuppositions concerns methodology: methodological individualism or atomicism versus holism or organicism.
  • The sinner's prayer is an example of a wrong presupposition that plagues much of modern evangelism.
  • The destructive lionly skepticism burns all bridges to prior beliefs and presuppositions.

All 14 example sentences with presupposition

Synonyms of presupposition

Forms of presupposition

pluralpresuppositions

Origin of presupposition

From Middle French présupposition, from Latin praesuppositio, from the past participle stem of praesuppōnere (“to presuppose”).

Words formed from presupposition

Questions about presupposition

What does presupposition mean?
Presupposition means an assumption made beforehand; a preliminary conjecture or speculation.
What is presupposition in Hindi?
Presupposition in Hindi is पूर्वमान्यता (pūrvamānyatā). See Presupposition meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is presupposition?
Presupposition is a noun.
How do you pronounce presupposition?
Presupposition is pronounced /pɹiː.sʌ.pəˈzɪ.ʃ(ə)n/ (UK).
What is the plural of presupposition?
The plural of presupposition is presuppositions.

Words near presupposition in the dictionary

  1. presupposer
  2. presupposers
  3. presupposes
  4. presupposing
  5. presupposingly
  6. presupposition
  7. presuppositional
  8. presuppositionalism
  9. presuppositionalist
  10. presuppositionalistic
  11. presuppositionalists

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: presupposition (page history and authors); presupposition (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); presupposition (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); presupposition (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); presupposition (Kannada Wiktionary) (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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