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/pˈɑstʃəlˌeɪt/ /pˈɑstʃələt/ Listen

verb

Postulate v. t. (past & past part. postulated; pres. part. postulating)

To beg, or assume without proof; as, to postulate conclusions.

To take without express consent; to assume. "The Byzantine emperors appear to have... postulated a sort of paramount supremacy over this nation."

To invite earnestly; to solicit. (Obs.)

noun

Postulate n.

Something demanded or asserted; especially, a position or supposition assumed without proof, or one which is considered as self-evident; a truth to which assent may be demanded or challenged, without argument or evidence.

(Geom.) The enunciation of a self-evident problem, in distinction from an axiom, which is the enunciation of a self-evident theorem. "The distinction between a postulate and an axiom lies in this, that the latter is admitted to be self-evident, while the former may be agreed upon between two reasoners, and admitted by both, but not as proposition which it would be impossible to deny."

adjective

Postulate adj. Postulated. (Obs.)

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Etymology of 'Postulate'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Postulate" Quotes from Famous Books

... according to the varying development of exterior influences upon them, but of the most typical portion of the central body, the section containing the scientific engineering or scientific medical sort of people, we can postulate certain tendencies with some confidence. Certain ways of thought they must develop, certain habits of mind and eye they will radiate out into the adjacent portions of the social mass. We can even, I think, deduce some conception of the home in which ...

— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... the mental plane is again totally different, for in this case we can no longer speak of separate senses such as sight and hearing, but rather have to postulate one general sense which responds so fully to the vibrations reaching it that when any object comes within its cognition it at once comprehends it fully, and as it were sees it, hears it, feels it, and knows all there is to know about it by the one instantaneous operation. Yet even this wonderful ...

— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater

... but there have naturally been some who have found it less easy than they could have foreseen to live up to the sacrifices it has necessitated. Of course there have been such people: one would have had to postulate them if they had not come within one's experience. There have been some to whom it was harder than they imagined to give up a certain way of living, or a certain kind of breakfast-roll; though the French, being fundamentally temperate, are far less the slaves ...

— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton

... comprehension. This hypothesis is hardly in accordance with the concomitant faith of those who adopt it, in the miraculous insight and superhuman sagacity of their Master; nor do I see any way of getting it to harmonise with the orthodox postulate; namely, that Matthew was the author of the first gospel and John of the fourth. If that is so, then, most assuredly, Matthew was no dullard; and as for the fourth gospel—a theosophic romance of the first order—it could have been written by none but a man of remarkable ...

— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... does not present, and that is the difficulty of so adjusting your duties that the total proportion of them falling upon the wage-earning classes shall not be increased. I for one regard such an adjustment as a postulate in any scheme of Tariff Reform. And just one other argument—and I recommend it especially to those working-class leaders who are so vehement in their denunciation of Tariff Reform. Is it of no importance to the people whom they especially claim to represent ...

— Constructive Imperialism • Viscount Milner

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