logician
Americannoun
noun
Etymology
Origin of logician
1350–1400; logic + -ian; replacing Middle English logicien < Middle French
Explanation
Logic is the science of reasoning and relationships between ideas. An expert in logic is a logician. Spock, a Star Trek character, is the ultimate logician — when asked why not, he answers, "Because it isn't logical." A logician examines statements to decide whether they are true and is active in the fields of math and computer science. A very simple example of what a logician does can be given with the word or. What exactly does it mean if you say "A or B?" A logician would say that it can mean: 1. A but not B, 2. B but not A, or 3. A and B (this sounds weird but in logic this is true). Or, however, does not mean "not A and not B." Logicians usually deal with much more complex ideas and statements than this.
Vocabulary lists containing logician
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.
Mr. Elwes, a mathematical logician and professor at the University of Leeds, enumerates a multitude of such anecdotes—delightful, insightful, informative—to illustrate the bigger picture in “Huge Numbers.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 29, 2026
As Bessent should understand, the violation of one logical condition can obviate the logic of another—what a logician might call an “antecedent condition.”
From Barron's ● Jan. 22, 2026
Any logician will tell you that there is a lot to love about Venn diagrams, but what does Vice President Harris’ love of them tell us about her?
From Salon ● Jul. 29, 2024
Also Fyodor, employed at a meatpacking plant and probably ill-fatedly dating a vegetarian and logician, Timo, who is opposed to the slaughter of animals but supports the death penalty for mass shooters.
From New York Times ● May 21, 2023
The first person to do this sort of trick—adding infinite terms to get a finite result—was the fourteenth-century British logician Richard Suiseth.
From "Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea" by Charles Seife
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.
