How to use presupposition in a sentence

14 example sentences · noun

Presupposition means an assumption made beforehand; a preliminary conjecture or speculation. Example: “He made one cardinal error in his presuppositions about the relation between language and perception, but in this he was far from alone.”

Examples of presupposition by meaning

nounAn 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

nounAn 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.1971, Paul Kiparsky, Carol Kiparsky, “Fact”, in Danny Steinberg, Leon Jakobovits, editors, Semantics: An Interdisciplinary Reader in...

More sentences with presupposition

The third pair of presuppositions concerns methodology: methodological individualism or atomicism versus holism or organicism.2022, Marc Lavoie, Post-Keynesian Economics: New Foundations, page Page 17. From the entry atomicism
The sinner's prayer is an example of a wrong presupposition that plagues much of modern evangelism.2011, John MacArthur et al., Evangelism: How to Share the Gospel Faithfully, page 134. From the entry decisionism
The destructive lionly skepticism burns all bridges to prior beliefs and presuppositions.1994, George David Miller, An Idiosyncratic Ethics. From the entry lionly
A semantically complex question is one that contains a connective, ‘and’, ‘or’, or ‘if–then’ in its presupposition.1989, Douglas N. Walton, Informal Logic: A Handbook for Critical Argumentation, →ISBN, page 58, →ISBN. From the entry question the question
Discursive valuability holds equally well for entailments and presuppositions.2020, Werner Abraham, Modality in Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics, page 65. From the entry valuability
Hope in liberation can imbue the singular transgressive body-performativity as well as the performative uses of fallibilist pragmatic presuppositions of human communication action.1998, Martin J[oseph] Beck Matuštík, “Hope and Refusal”, in Specters of Liberation: Great Refusals in the New World Order (SUNY Series in…. From the entry refusenik
“Deep rhetoric” — the normally tacit presuppositions of discourse — functions in the Weaverian view as “practical wisdom” does in Aristotelean ethics.1981, Dissertation Abstracts International: The Humanities and Social Sciences, University Microfilms International, page 2363. From the entry deep rhetoric
Hume's morality which ‘implies some sentiment common to all mankind’; Kant's morality for all rational beings; Butler's morality with its presupposition of ‘uniformity of conscience’.1954, Bernard Mayo, “Ethics and Moral Controversy”, in The Philosophical Quarterly, volume 4, number 14, page 11. From the entry morality
Of something that does not satisfy the presupposition of the pair exists and nonexists, and so neither exists nor nonexists, we cannot ask why it exists.1993, Daniel Kolak, Self, Cosmos, God, page 370. From the entry nonexist
Once again, the answerer must question the question by requesting that the propositions in the presupposition be separated into units that he can reasonable deal with.1989, Douglas N. Walton, Informal Logic: A Handbook for Critical Argumentation, →ISBN, page 58, →ISBN. From the entry question the question
The presupposition of the Prometheus myth is to be found in the extravagant value which a naive humanity attached to fire as the true palladium of every ascending culture.1967, Friedrich Nietzsche, translated by Walter Kaufman, The Birth of Tragedy, published 1872, in 1967. From the entry palladium
Nor is there anything in the history of the United States that validates the presupposition that anyone who is wester than anybody is simultaneously and necessatily more interior than anybody.1969 January 6, Bertram L. Podell, Congressional Record, United States, page 276. From the entry wester

Meaning of presupposition

noun An assumption made beforehand; a preliminary conjecture or speculation.
noun The act of presupposing.
noun An assumption or belief implicit in an utterance or other use of language.

Full definition of presupposition

Questions about presupposition in a sentence

How do you use presupposition in a sentence?: Presupposition is used as a noun. For example: “He made one cardinal error in his presuppositions about the relation between language and perception, but in this he was far from alone.”
What is a short sentence with presupposition?: “Discursive valuability holds equally well for entailments and presuppositions.”
What does presupposition mean?: Presupposition means an assumption made beforehand; a preliminary conjecture or speculation.

Adapted from Wiktionary: presupposition (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

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