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Supposititious   Listen
Supposititious

adjective
1.
Based primarily on surmise rather than adequate evidence.  Synonyms: conjectural, divinatory, hypothetic, hypothetical, supposed, suppositional, suppositious.  "The supposed reason for his absence" , "Suppositious reconstructions of dead languages" , "Hypothetical situation"






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"Supposititious" Quotes from Famous Books



... the murder to be sent for, and then proceeds to relate his own history. He has been taught to believe that Polybus of Corinth and Merope of Doris were his parents. But once at a banquet he was charged with being a supposititious child; the insult galled him, and he went to Delphi to consult the oracle. It was predicted to him that he should commit incest with his mother, and that his father should fall by his hand. Appalled and horror-stricken, he resolves to fly the possible fulfilment of the prophecy, and return ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... absorbed in self as this egoistic young creature. If Henry of Navarre were but like his Ambassador how easy it would be to love him! and suddenly it flashed through her mind that they were indeed one and the same. What other signification could be placed upon this supposititious drama which they ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney

... a supposititious interview with Harvey's English valet on how it felt to be a valet of a great man. Both the valet and Harvey waxed ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... through chaos into conformity, or something like it,—as we see Laplanders, Esquimaux, &c. inferior in the present state, as the elements become more inexorable. But even then this higher pre-Adamite supposititious creation must have had an origin and a Creator—for a creation is a more natural imagination than a fortuitous concourse of atoms: all things remount to a fountain, though they may flow ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... for a time on Egypt, as one of the ten plagues; but the event was evidently miraculous; and no student of natural science is entitled to have recourse, in order to extricate himself out of a difficulty, to supposititious, unrecorded miracle. Creation cannot take place without miracle; but it would be a strange reversal of all our previous conclusions on the subject, should we have to hold that the dead, dark, blank ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... chemistry disagreed with his ideas as to colloids. Everybody admitted that the chemists must have the final word on this subject: are you now claiming that religion or theology, or whatever you choose to call it, is also entitled to a say in a matter of that kind?" This supposititious conversation illustrates the confusion which exists in many minds as to the point at issue. One science is entitled to contradict another, just as one scientific man is entitled to contradict another on a question of fact. But on a question ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle

... of James II., the party of William, Prince of Orange, asserted that the Prince of Orange was a supposititious child, and accused James of having spirited away the persona who could have proved the birth of the Queen's child, and of having made the midwife leave the kingdom precipitately, she being the only person who had ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans

... bathing-machines in one picture, and five houses and eight machines in the other, illustrates an instance where the range of vision is not the same; but I contend that the stereoscopic effect is then confined to five {349} houses and five machines, otherwise MR. WILKINSON'S supposititious case (ibid.), of all machines in one, and all houses in the other, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various

... member of the Saul family, who appear to have been expert coiners," said Jennings, on his way to Kensington, "and, according to Le Beau, she gave him a false sovereign. I wonder if she keeps up the business, and if Clancy and Hale, together with Mrs. Herne, this supposititious mother, have to do with the matter. That unfinished house would make an admirable factory, and the presence of the ghosts would be accounted for if a gang of coiners was discovered there. But there is a fifteen-feet wall round ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume

... person otherwise, was generally regarded as enjoying a more dignified position than that occupied by the most eminent of performers. In time, of course, the status of the actor improved, and he outgrew the supposititious degradation attaching to his exercise of his profession. We have lived to see composers, authors, and even scene-painters summoned before the foot-lights, nothing loath, apparently, to accept this public recognition of their merits. But ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... height of business, directing the setting of the breakfast-table, clearing away the debris of the evening feast, and counting the silver with unusual care, lest a stray fork or spoon had, by some hocus-pocus known to the class, been slipped into the pocket of the supposititious burglar. ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... this concluding greeting are to be proof to them of the genuineness of the letter. It appears from other references in the same epistle (ch. ii. 2) that some busybody had been writing a letter to the Thessalonians, which purported to be a message from Paul; he puts them on their guard against these supposititious documents. At the end of the letter to the Galatians you find in the old version: "Ye see how large a letter I have written unto you with my own hand;" but the right rendering is in the new version: "See with how large letters [what a bold chirography] I have written unto ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden

... remarked the disappointment which overspread her soul. Every day she saw the marquis, who did all he could to increase her regret, and incessantly stirred up her ill-humour by repeating that the count and countess were triumphing over her misfortune, and insinuating that they were importing a supposititious child to disinherit her. As usual both in private and political affairs, he began by corrupting the marchioness's religious views, to pervert her into crime. The marquis was one of those libertines ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE COUNTESS DE SAINT-GERAN—1639 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... the breast of his aged parent had been communicated to him. He was ready to go anywhere and cook anything, and having as a preliminary arranged a napkin under his arm, went bustling about the table disturbing imaginary flies and flicking off supposititious crumbs, as he had seen the waiter do in the restaurant at the hotel down in ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy

... dogmas, the support of a fabric of controversial thought, the lay figure to fill out and wear the hypothetical dresses of a doctrinal system; and there is the Scientific Adam, the first specimen of the genus man, the supposititious personage who, as the earliest product, on this grade, of the Creative organic force or Divine energy, commenced the series of human generations. The first is a hypostatized legend, the second a metaphysical personification, the third a philosophical hypothesis. ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... 3: As Chrysostom says (Hom. i super Matth. [*Opus Imperfectum, among the supposititious works ascribed to St. Chrysostom]) the Blessed Virgin was so espoused to Joseph that she dwelt in his home: "for just as she who conceives in her husband's house is understood to have conceived of him, so she who conceives ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... Mortgrange and Cinqmer, Baronet, and Robina Armour his wife, daughter of Simon Armour, Blacksmith, born in lawful wedlock in the house of Mortgrange, in the year 18—!—and so worded, at the request of sir Wilton, that even should the law declare him supposititious, the ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald

... with clay originally and domestically kneaded to the right plasticity; besides which he shone, to my fancy, and all the more for its seeming so brightly and quietly in his very grain, with the vague, the supposititious, but the intensely accent-giving stamp of the Latin quarter, which we so thinly imagined and so superficially brushed on our pious walks to the Luxembourg and through the parts where the glamour might have hung ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... one can fancy the liberal scholar, the humorous philosopher, meeting the romantic poet, and protesting against the second earthly captivity that he has delivered him over to. Nothing could be more alien to Bonivard than the character of Byron's prisoner; and all that equipment of six supposititious brothers, who perish one by one to intensify his sufferings, is, it must be confessed, odious and ridiculous when you think of the lonely yet cheerful sceptic pacing his vionnet, and composing essays and verses ...
— A Little Swiss Sojourn • W. D. Howells

... difficulties of early attempts, and the indifferent success which sometimes attends them in their first state. Bayle, to lighten the fatigue of correcting the second edition of his Dictionary, wrote the first volume of "Reponses aux Questions d'un Provincial," a supposititious correspondence with a country gentleman. It was a work of mere literary curiosity, and of a better description of miscellaneous writing than that of the prevalent fashion of giving thoughts and maxims, and fanciful characters, and idle stories, which had satiated ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... great attention, and her mild but speaking countenance manifested a strong sympathy in the anticipated agony of the supposititious sufferer. At first she seemed at a loss how to act; then, taking a hand of Deerslayer's she affectionately recommended to him to borrow her Bible, and to read it while the savages were inflicting their ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... may be accounted for in a simple and feasible manner, without recourse to scientific argument. It is undoubtedly the burrowing of the worms, coupled with the wasting action of rain and frost, which causes the phenomenon. Instead, however, of the sexton's supposititious century, the period required for total disappearance may more accurately be regarded as from 200 to 250 years. It has been found by careful observation in a few random cases that the stones subside at the rate of about one foot ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent

... opened the paper before him and spread it severely on the table. The supposititious letter, "Two, Linden Row," opened in proper form and spelling, addressed to "Dearest Elizabeth." Its progress, however, soon wabbled, its periods degenerated into a confusion. It endeavored to be casual, easy, but he judged it merely trivial. At one paragraph, ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer

... if not positive proof, at least very good reason for believing it intended as a series of lyrics; but, granting the epic intention, I can say only that the work is based in an imperfect sense of art. The modern epic is, of the supposititious ancient model, but an inconsiderate and blindfold imitation. But the day of these artistic anomalies is over. If, at any time, any very long poems were popular in reality—which I doubt—it is at least clear that no very long poem will ever be ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... show good hunting!" answered King, draining his glass; and it was his first that day. "If it weren't for that note of hers that came down the Pass, and for one or two other things, I'd almost believe her a myth—one of those supposititious people who are supposed to express some ideal or other. Not an hallucination, you understand—nor exactly an embodied spirit, either. Perhaps the spirit of a problem. Let y be the Khyber district, z the tribes, and x the spirit of the ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy

... those visitors to this exhibition, who do not profess an intimacy with the objects herein collected for their amusement, from being misled by the supposititious circumstance of the highest prize having commanded the best picture, we beg to point to their attention the following peculiarities (by no means recommendatory) in the work selected by the most fortunate of the jewel-hunters; it is catalogued "The Sleeping Beauty," by D. Maclise, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... more than a coincidence, or that the summons to it had any influence in the matter of the proclamation, is disproved by all that is known concerning it.[37] The connection with the battle is direct, avowed, and reasonable; that with the gubernatorial congress is supposititious and improbable. Governor Curtin says distinctly that the President, being informed by himself and two others that such a conference was in preparation, "did not attempt to conceal the fact that we were upon the eve of an emancipation policy," in response to which statement he ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse

... propagating books; his small Life of Milton produced several; besides the complacency he felt in extracting long passages from Milton against the bishops. In this Life, his attack on the authenticity of the Eikon Basilike of Charles I. branched into another on supposititious writings; and this included the spurious gospels. Association of ideas is a nursing mother to the fertility of authorship. The spurious gospels opened a fresh theological campaign, and produced his "Amyntor." There was no end in provoking an author, who, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... tell her. Tell her—and all will be well. She has put herself in the supposititious woman's place, and she says, 'He ought to tell her.' She says it earnestly, vehemently. That means that if she were the woman, she would wish to be told. She will despise the conventional barriers—she will be touched, she will be moved. 'No woman could be proof ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland

... could not be begotten by him. But, this being a matter of some uncertainty, the law is not exact as to a few days[l]. And this gives occasion to a proceeding at common law, where a widow is suspected to feign herself with child, in order to produce a supposititious heir to the estate: an attempt which the rigor of the Gothic constitutions esteemed equivalent to the most atrocious theft, and therefore punished with death[m]. In this case with us the heir presumptive may have a writ de ventre inspiciendo, to examine whether she be with child, ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... "Golden Legends" of Jacob de Voragine, a Dominican of the thirteenth century, fed the popular belief. Miracles so commemorated often occurred in connection with relics; and the traffic in relics and so styled "pious" frauds, not to say the forcible means used to procure reputed relics of authentic or supposititious saints, forms a curious if a discreditable feature in mediaval history. An occasional protest was uttered against the manner in which credit was often obtained for relics of more than doubtful authenticity; but the manufacture of them was easy and profitable, and pilgrims returning ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley

... Clennam's presuming to have debated the great question were too distant and ridiculous to be imagined. He had always an affability to bestow on Clennam and an ease to treat him with, which might of itself (in the supposititious case of his not having taken that sagacious course) have been a very uncomfortable element in ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... truth without deciding to discover it. Finally, he began to suspect. "Well," he said to himself, "is it possible she believes that I am making love to her daughter? No, that would be too much!" And, combating with ingenious and loyal arguments that supposititious conviction, he felt indignant that she had lent for an instant to this healthy and almost paternal affection any suspicion of gallantry. He became more and more irritated against the Countess, utterly unwilling to concede that she had dared suspect him of such villainy, of an infamy so unqualifiable; ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant

... demonstrate the absence of trickery or collusion everyone turns up his sleeves and empties his waistcoat pockets. There is no room for sleight of hand in presence of this searching scientific investigation. The umbrella is certainly not a supposititious animal; yet it is the umbrella of Mr. Cyper Redalf's boyhood. No one can doubt this who sees him clasp it in a fond embrace, who sees him shed burning tears ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay

... substantial or has life and sensation, is one of the false beliefs of mortals, and exists only in a supposititious mortal consciousness. Hence, 278:15 as we approach Spirit and Truth, we lose the consciousness of matter. The admission that there can be material substance requires another admission, - 278:18 namely, that Spirit is not infinite and that matter is self- ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... rods, cranks, levers, and the thousand-and-one items which go to make up a mechanical contrivance. Great care is taken in constructing toy models to reproduce at least the chief points of the original, in order to give them a supposititious educational value. The parents then fondly imagine that, in stocking the nursery with these abominations, they are largely assisting in the development ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst

... wearied with the exertion of their talk. His eyes had left Milo's, and had concentrated on the man's big and hairy hands. As Milo spoke of the supposititious criminals who desired his possessions enough to do murder for them, his fists clenched, tightly. And to Brice's memory came ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune



Words linked to "Supposititious" :   hypothetic, theoretic, theoretical, supposition



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