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
Admit candidly that the addition of intelligence at a certain stage, however mysteriously interwoven with structural accompaniments, is a gift ab extra, and we have at least a reasonable and so far satisfactory explanation.
From Creation and Its Records by Baden Henry Baden-Powell
But the germination of every seed depends on conditions ab extra, and all germs are modified, in their development, by geographical and climatal surroundings.
From Christianity and Greek Philosophy or, the relation between spontaneous and reflective thought in Greece and the positive teaching of Christ and His Apostles by B. F. (Benjamin Franklin) Cocker
Where the Syllogism comes in as a useful form is when certain propositions are delivered to you ab extra as containing a certain conclusion; and the connexion is not apparent.
From Logic, Inductive and Deductive by William Minto
We are conscious that he is a cold-blooded spectator ab extra striving to describe what he has never felt for himself.
From The Tale of Terror A Study of the Gothic Romance by Edith Birkhead
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.
