Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Proximate   /prˈɑksəmət/   Listen
Proximate

adjective
1.
Closest in degree or order (space or time) especially in a chain of causes and effects.  "Interest in proximate rather than ultimate goals"
2.
Very close in space or time.  "Proximate houses"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Proximate" Quotes from Famous Books



... "Sensation is not the proximate cause of organic movements. It may be so with the higher animals, but it cannot be shown to be so with plants, nor even with all known animals. At the outset of life there was none of that sensation which could only arise where organic beings ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... of the parties to the contest and the grounds on which they respectively stand. I do not now refer to the original causes of controversy—to the comparative claims of Statehood and Union, or to the question of the right or the wrong of secession—but to the proximate and immediate ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... their great object, and wickedness was left unrebuked both in Clergy and laity. A great impulse was given to the sale of indulgences or pardons, an evil practice which brought in large sums of money to the papal exchequer, and at the same time led to such abuses as probably to become a principal proximate cause of the Reformation. ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt

... bought a copy of this book he was willing to do what was asked, and to attempt also to translate into German Phillips' "Proximate Causes of the Material Phenomena of the Universe," or what the translator called "his tale of an apple and a pear." But Phillips changed his mind about the "Dairyman's Daughter" and commissioned a compilation of "Newgate Lives ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... monuments, that a voice may forever be sounding audibly in human ears of homage to these powers, and that even alien feelings may be compelled into secret submission to their influence. Therefore, amongst the number of those who value such things, upon the scale of direct proximate utility, rank not me: that arithmetica officina is in my years abominable. But still I affirm that, in our analysis of an ordinary university, or "college" as it is provincially called, we have not yet ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... of New York, opposed the bill principally on the ground of the expense involved in its execution. After having presented many columns of figures, Mr. Taylor arrived at this conclusion: "The cost or proximate cost of the bureau for one year, confining its operation to the hitherto slave States, will be $25,251,600. That it is intended to put the bureau in full operation in every county and parish of the hitherto slave States, including Delaware, ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... Caucasian branch of the human family from the high plains of Asia, first over Europe, and thence, with swelling tide, pouring its multitudes into the New World, is the grandest phenomenon in history. What American can contemplate its results, as displayed before him, and as promised in the proximate future, without an emotion of ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland

... necessity for calling in an additional and proximate cause in regard to Man. But the subject is too long for ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... trace it back to its origin, we may often stop on this side of that point, provided that which is deduced is higher than that for which it is deduced, as, "Rain water in its ultimate genus is that which descends from heaven and is increased by showers," but in reference to its more proximate sense, under which the right of keeping it off is comprised, the genus is, mischievous rain water. The subordinate species of that genus are waters which injure through a natural defect of the place, or those which are injurious on ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero

... the doctor. "Better wash the lot and then we'll get after the ultimate analysis. Whether we'll be able to make a proximate is doubtful in view of the small amount of sample we have. It's dollars to doughnuts that it's ...
— Poisoned Air • Sterner St. Paul Meek

... Foods. Foods may be conveniently divided into four great classes, to which the name food-stuffs or alimentary principles has been given. They correspond to the chief "proximate principles" of which the body consists. To one or the other of these classes all available foods belong[16]. The classification of food-stuffs usually given ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell

... signorinas, quavering to distraction, backed by gigantic "basses," (double ones surely,) who, with voices like the "seven devils" of the old Grecian, bellowed out divers sentimentalisms about dying for love, when assuredly their most proximate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various

... the death of the patient, generally attributes the sickness to uncertain causes and sometimes so remote that they have no connection with the case in question; and, since he prescribes his remedies for such causes, the true, proximate, and essential causes which are working out of sight without any check, end, if not by killing the patient, by placing him in evident risk. All see and recognize that the commerce of the Indias is in a feeble condition, that the merchants are losing, that the exporters do not obtain their capital ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various

... called REAL wickedness, the kind that did the most harm, and invited him by inference, to a liberal judgment of stupid sinners. He sat emitting short unsmiling sentences with eyes nervously fugitive from Lady Dolly's too proximate opulence until the third act began. Then he gave place with embarrassed alacrity to Colonel Cummins, and folded his arms again at the back ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)

... those which they acquire with tenacity; they cannot reason concerning general causes; they expect that any event, which has once or twice followed another, will always follow in the same order; they do not distinguish between proximate and remote causes, between coincidences and the regular connection of cause and effect: hence children are subject to feel hopes and fears from things which to us appear matters of indifference. Suppose, for instance, that a child is very eager to go out to walk, that his ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

... necessities. ST. THOMAS AQUINAS crushed with a single blow all this scaffolding of words built one upon the other, by proclaiming the eternal Empire of Reason, in that magnificent sentence, "A thing is not just because GOD wills it; but GOD wills it because it is just." The proximate consequence of this proposition, arguing from the greater to the less, was this: "A thing is not true because ARISTOTLE has said it; but ARISTOTLE could not reasonably say it unless it was true. Seek then, first of all, the TRUTH and JUSTICE, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... itself must determine by how much. The question put by C. H. is too general to admit of a positive solution; but should he specify the commodity and place of investment in the seventeenth century and to-day of the 1000l., our statistics might still be at fault, and deny us even a proximate determination of his inquiry. Even his 1000l., which he may consider a fixed measure of value, or punctum comparationis, is varying in value (power of purchase) daily, even hourly, as regards almost every exchangeable product. Tooke On Prices is a first-rate ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various

... The proximate causes of these contrasts are not obscure. We must suppose that a self-sufficing community might at one time, as well as at another, be drawn together by formative beliefs. But that it may take root somewhere and, by protecting itself against destructive ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... serene and disengaged mood of mind which expressed itself in throwing the stone. But, true as all this is, it would be very foolish for any one who {217} was inquiring the cause of the sparrow's fall to overlook the boy as too personal, proximate, and so to speak anthropomorphic an agent, and to say that the true cause is the federal constitution, the westward migration of the Celtic race, or the structure of the milky way. If we proceeded on that method, we might say with perfect ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... fact that the larva of a working-bee will develop into a queen-bee, if before it is too late, its food be changed to that on which the larvae of queen-bees are fed. All which instances suggest that the proximate cause of each advance in embryonic complication is the action of incident forces upon the complication previously existing. Indeed, we may find a priori reason to think that the evolution proceeds after this manner. For since no ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... die without being baptized, are excluded from the divine voluntas salvifica, because, while the non-reception of Baptism is the proximate reason of their damnation, its ultimate reason must be the ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle

... that even then, the old dynasty, being useless, must give way to a usurping collateral branch. Consequently, he has nothing but the most trivial commonplaces to utter respecting the overthrow of the English restored monarchy. He does not even cite the proximate causes: the fears entertained by the great new landowners, who had been created by the Reformation, at the prospect of restoration of Catholicism, when they would have been obliged to surrender all the former Church property which had been stolen, which meant that ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx

... regions of positive certitude, and come into the domain where Conjecture, varying from the strongest presumption to mere plausibility, is the highest proof. Laws or Principles are yet undiscovered there, and in their place we find Generalizations—Suppositive or Proximate Laws—which are in process of proof, or already established by such evidence as the Inductive Method can array, and which carry the conviction of their correctness with varying degrees of force, to larger or ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various

... the Tartars was final. The Golden Horde was annihilated, and the scourge of Russia and her princes was no more. In a better educated state of society, these events, so sudden and so important, must have been attributed to proximate and obvious causes—the combinations of operations over which Ivan had no control, and the dismay into which the Tartars were surprised, followed up quickly by overwhelming masses who possessed the superiority in numbers and in plan. Ivan, who ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson



Words linked to "Proximate" :   immediate, close, ultimate



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com