ab extra
Americanadverb
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
"It seems to me," he said, "that there is a guiding and directing principle ab extra which interacts with the material of the physical universe but is not of it."
From Time Magazine Archive
The first question, then, for the historian should be, What accounts does this nation give of its early history? the second, What account of this nation's early history can be obtained ab extra?
From An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 by Mary Frances Cusack
To the former I complained of persecution ab extra, which might be stopped by police intervention, of the latter I demanded explanations for personal vexations and insults.
From Letters of a Lunatic A Brief Exposition of My University Life, During the Years 1853-54 by George J. Adler
Without provocation ab extra, without warning on their own part, suddenly they place themselves in an attitude of desperate defiance to the known law of the land.
From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. by Various
A people will no more quit their alphabet than they will quit their language; they will no more consent to modify the one ab extra than the other.
From English Past and Present by Abram Smythe Palmer
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
