ab extra

American  

[ahb ek-strah, ab ek-struh] / ɑb ˈɛk strɑ, æb ˈɛk strə /

adverb

Latin.

1. from the outside.

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Example Sentences

"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

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 Birkhead, Edith

But in most English humor,--as indeed in all English literature except the very highest,--the social class to which the writer does not belong is regarded ab extra.

From Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 6 by Mabie, Hamilton Wright

So long as deistic views of the relation of God to man and the world held the field, revelation meant something interjected ab extra into the established order of things.

From An Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant by Moore, Edward Caldwell

As long as there was any thing ab extra to conquer, the state advanced: when nothing remained but what was Roman, then, as a matter of course, civil war began.

From Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge by Coleridge, Henry Nelson