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CERTAINTY
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Something that is certain
Example:
his victory is a certainty
Synonyms:
certainty; foregone conclusion; sure thing
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms ("certainty" is a kind of...):
quality (an essential and distinguishing attribute of something or someone)
Attribute:
certain (established beyond doubt or question; definitely known)
uncertain (not established beyond doubt; still undecided or unknown)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "certainty"):
cert (an absolute certainty)
ineluctability; unavoidability (the quality of being impossible to avoid or evade)
inevitability; inevitableness (the quality of being unavoidable)
surety (something clearly established)
indisputability; indubitability; unquestionability; unquestionableness (the quality of being beyond question or dispute or doubt)
moral certainty (certainty based on an inner conviction)
predictability (the quality of being predictable)
slam dunk (something that is a sure to occur; a foregone conclusion)
Antonym:
uncertainty (being unsettled or in doubt or dependent on chance)
Sense 2
Meaning:
The state of being certain
Example:
his certainty reassured the others
Classified under:
Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents
Hypernyms ("certainty" is a kind of...):
cognitive state; state of mind (the state of a person's cognitive processes)
Attribute:
certain; sure (having or feeling no doubt or uncertainty; confident and assured)
incertain; uncertain; unsure (lacking or indicating lack of confidence or assurance)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "certainty"):
assurance; authority; confidence; self-assurance; self-confidence; sureness (freedom from doubt; belief in yourself and your abilities)
certitude; cocksureness; overconfidence (total certainty or greater certainty than circumstances warrant)
reliance; trust (certainty based on past experience)
Antonym:
uncertainty (the state of being unsure of something)
Context examples:
A neoplasm which, on morphologic grounds, can not be classified with certainty as benign or malignant.
(Neoplasm, Uncertain Whether Benign or Malignant, NCI Thesaurus)
Not learned, discovered, or determined with certainty.
(Not Ascertained, NCI Thesaurus)
Alas! it all went to confirm me in my first horrible suspicion, and to turn it into a certainty.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
I am quite sure of him, replied Jekyll; I have grounds for certainty that I cannot share with any one.
(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
Terminology associated with the microbial identification certainty codelist of the Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC) Standard Data Tabulation Model (SDTM).
(CDISC SDTM Microbial Identification Certainty Terminology, NCI Thesaurus)
One certainty is that Europa is bathed in radiation created by Jupiter's powerful magnetic field.
(NASA Research Reveals Europa's Mystery Dark Material Could Be Sea Salt, NASA)
He would put it through this ventilator at the hour that he thought best, with the certainty that it would crawl down the rope and land on the bed.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Scientists can't say with certainty what causes global dust storms; they've studied fewer than a dozen to date.
(Global Storms on Mars Launch Dust Towers Into the Sky, NASA)
But the outward-bound ones were very much deeper—so much so that we can say for a certainty that there was a very considerable weight on the carriage.
(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
But he had yet to learn the remarkable quickness of White Fang, who struck with the certainty and swiftness of a coiled snake.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
