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
![]()
I solicit from the friend who accompanied Mr. Edgerton the thoroughest statement which he can give me of the case, ab extra.
From The Opium Habit by Day, Horace B.
Milton is the deity of prescience; he stands ab extra, and drives a fiery chariot and four, making the horses feel the iron curb which holds them in.
From Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge by Coleridge, Henry Nelson
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
God was self-existent, or he was self-created, or he was created ab extra.
From Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors by Clarke, James Freeman
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.