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

For he could see himself, and laugh at himself, ab extra, better than most men.

From Delia Blanchflower by Ward, Humphry, Mrs.

Discoursing upon the hypothesis of "a fortuitous concourse of atoms" Dr. Priestley asks, "what reason we have to think that small masses of matter can have power without communication ab extra?"

From Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever by Turner, Matthew

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

It was a strange position for a young woman to be in—that of watcher over the marriage relations of two persons, to neither of whom she could be a friend otherwise than ab extra.

From Paul Faber, Surgeon by MacDonald, George