science
English
Etymology 1
From Middle English science, scyence, borrowed from Old French science, escience, from Latin scientia (“knowledge”), from sciens, the present participle stem of scire (“to know”).
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ˈsaɪəns/
Audio (US) (file) Audio (CA) (file) - Hyphenation: sci‧ence
- Rhymes: -aɪəns
Noun
science (countable and uncountable, plural sciences)
- (countable) A particular discipline or branch of learning, especially one dealing with measurable or systematic principles rather than intuition or natural ability. [from 14th c.]
- 2013 August 3, “Boundary problems”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847:
- Economics is a messy discipline: too fluid to be a science, too rigorous to be an art. Perhaps it is fitting that economists’ most-used metric, gross domestic product (GDP), is a tangle too. GDP measures the total value of output in an economic territory. Its apparent simplicity explains why it is scrutinised down to tenths of a percentage point every month.
- Of course in my opinion Social Studies is more of a science than an art.
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- Specifically the natural sciences.
- My favorite subjects at school are science, mathematics, and history.
- (uncountable, archaic) Knowledge gained through study or practice; mastery of a particular discipline or area. [from 14th c.]
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Qveene. […], London: Printed [by John Wolfe] for VVilliam Ponsonbie, OCLC 960102938, book III, canto I:
- For by his mightie Science he had seene / The secret vertue of that weapon keene […]
- Hammond
- If we conceive God's or science, before the creation, to be extended to all and every part of the world, seeing everything as it is, […] his science or sight from all eternity lays no necessity on anything to come to pass.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Shakespeare's deep and accurate science in mental philosophy
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- (now only theology) The fact of knowing something; knowledge or understanding of a truth. [from 14th c.]
- 1611, King James Version of the Bible, I Timothy 6:20-21
- O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding vain and profane babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: Which some professing have erred concerning the faith. Grace be with thee. Amen.
- 1611, King James Version of the Bible, I Timothy 6:20-21
- (uncountable) The collective discipline of study or learning acquired through the scientific method; the sum of knowledge gained from such methods and discipline. [from 18th c.]
- 1951 January 1, Albert Einstein, letter to Maurice Solovine, as published in Letters to Solovine (1993)
- I have found no better expression than "religious" for confidence in the rational nature of reality […] Whenever this feeling is absent, science degenerates into uninspired empiricism.
- 2012 January 1, Philip E. Mirowski, “Harms to Health from the Pursuit of Profits”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 1, page 87:
- In an era when political leaders promise deliverance from decline through America’s purported preeminence in scientific research, the news that science is in deep trouble in the United States has been as unwelcome as a diagnosis of leukemia following the loss of health insurance.
- 1951 January 1, Albert Einstein, letter to Maurice Solovine, as published in Letters to Solovine (1993)
- (uncountable) Knowledge derived from scientific disciplines, scientific method, or any systematic effort.
- 2001 September, Neil deGrasse Tyson, “Over the rainbow”, in Natural History, volume 110, number 7, page 30:
- While much good science has come from the Hubble telescope (including the most reliable measure to date for the expansion rate of the universe), you would never know from media accounts that the foundation of our cosmic knowledge continues to flow primarily from the analysis of spectra and not from looking at pretty pictures.
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- (uncountable) The scientific community.
- (Can we date this quote?), Dara Ó Briain as stand-up comedian, Dara Ó Briain Talks Funny – Live in London, United Kingdom, published 2008:
- Science knows it doesn't know everything; otherwise, it'd stop.
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Usage notes
Since the middle of the 20th century, in English – but not in German – the term science was normally used to indicate the natural sciences (e.g., chemistry), the social sciences (e.g., sociology), and the formal sciences (e.g., mathematics). In the 18th and 19th centuries, the term was broader and encompassed scholarly study of the humanities (e.g., grammar) and the arts (e.g., music).
Coordinate terms
Hyponyms
- agriscience
- antiscience
- applied science
- archival science
- behavioral science
- bionanoscience
- bioscience
- citizen science
- cognitive science
- computer science
- crank science
- creation science
- cyberscience
- data science
- dismal science
- Earth science
- environmental science
- ethnoscience
- exact science
- forensic science
- formal science
- fundamental science
- geoscience
- geroscience
- glycoscience
- hard science
- information science
- junk science
- library science
- life science
- marine science
- nanoscience
- natural science
- neuroscience
- palaeoscience
- photoscience
- physical science
- planetary science
- political science
- popular science
- proscience
- protoscience
- pseudoscience
- pure science
- rocket science
- social science
- soft science
- soil science
- space science
- structural science
- superscience
- sweet science
- systems science
- technoscience
Derived terms
- Bachelor of Science
- blind with science
- computer-science
- down to a science
- Hollywood science
- Letters and Science
- Master of Science
- McScience
- multiscience
- non-science
- nonscience
- omniscience
- philosophy of science
- pop-science
- pseudo-science
- science centre
- science fair
- science fiction
- science fiction
- scienceless
- sciencelike
- science room
- sciences
- scientific
- scientifically
- scientist
- social-science
- unscience
Related terms
Translations
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- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#Translations.
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Verb
science (third-person singular simple present sciences, present participle sciencing, simple past and past participle scienced)
- (transitive, dated) To cause to become versed in science; to make skilled; to instruct.
- (Can we find and add a quotation of Francis to this entry?)
- (transitive, colloquial, humorous) To use science to solve a problem.
Etymology 2
See scion.
French
Etymology
From Middle French science, from Old French science, escience, borrowed from Latin scientia.[1]
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /sjɑ̃s/
Audio (France, Paris) (file) - Rhymes: -ɑ̃s
- Homophone: sciences
Related terms
References
Further reading
- “science” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).
Middle English
Etymology
From Old French science, from Latin scientia.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /siːˈɛns(ə)/, /siˈɛns(ə)/
Noun
science (plural sciences)
- facts, knowledge; that which is known:
- One's faculty of finding information; knowing or insight
- One's faculty of making sound decisions; sagaciousness.
- One's aptitude or learning; one's knowledge (in a field).
- A non-learned discipline, pursuit, or field.
- (rare) verifiability; trust in knowledge.
References
- “scī̆ence (n.)” in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-05-24.
Middle French
Etymology
From Old French science.