postulate

American  

[pos-chuh-leyt, pos-chuh-lit, -leyt] / ˈpɒs tʃəˌleɪt, ˈpɒs tʃə lɪt, -ˌleɪt /

verb (used with object)

• postulates,
  present (3rd person singular)
• postulated,
  past participle,  past
• postulating
  present participle

1. to ask, demand, or claim.

2. to claim or assume the existence or truth of, especially as a basis for reasoning or arguing.

3. to assume without proof, or as self-evident; take for granted.

   Synonyms:

   conjecture, presuppose, hypothecate

4. Mathematics, Logic. to assume as a postulate.

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noun

• postulates
  plural

1. something taken as self-evident or assumed without proof as a basis for reasoning.

   Synonyms:

   conjecture, assumption, axiom, theory, hypothesis

2. Mathematics, Logic. a proposition that requires no proof, being self-evident, or that is for a specific purpose assumed true, and that is used in the proof of other propositions; axiom.

3. a fundamental principle.

4. a necessary condition; prerequisite.

postulate British  

verb

1. to assume to be true or existent; take for granted

2. to ask, demand, or claim

3. to nominate (a person) to a post or office subject to approval by a higher authority

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noun

1. something taken as self-evident or assumed as the basis of an argument

2. a necessary condition or prerequisite

3. a fundamental principle

4. logic maths an unproved and indemonstrable statement that should be taken for granted: used as an initial premise or underlying hypothesis in a process of reasoning

postulate Scientific  

/ pŏs′chə-lĭt /

1. See axiom

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postulate Cultural  

1. A statement accepted as true for the purposes of argument or scientific investigation; also, a basic principle. (See axiom.)

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• postulation
  noun
• repostulate
  noun
• repostulation
  noun
• repostulate
  verb (used with object)
• postulational
  adjective
• unpostulated
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• postulates
  plural

Participles

• postulating
  present
• postulated
  past

Conjugated Forms

Present

• postulate
  simple
• postulates
  simple
• have postulated
  perfect
• has postulated
  perfect
• am postulating
  progressive
• are postulating
  progressive
• is postulating
  progressive
• have been postulating
  perfect progressive
• has been postulating
  perfect progressive

Past

• postulated
  simple
• had postulated
  perfect
• was postulating
  progressive
• were postulating
  progressive
• had been postulating
  perfect progressive

Future

• will postulate
  simple
• will have postulated
  perfect
• will be postulating
  progressive
• will have been postulating
  perfect progressive

Etymology

Origin of postulate

1525–35; < Latin postulātum petition, thing requested, noun use of neuter of past participle of postulāre to request, demand, akin to pōscere to request

Explanation

Assume something or present it as a fact and you postulate it. Physicists postulate the existence of parallel universes, which is a little mind-blowing. Anyone who has suffered through geometry class is familiar with some of the greatest hits, like Euclid's postulate and the point-line-plane postulate. Those are propositions that have to be assumed for other mathematical statements to follow logically. As a verb (pronounced "POST-you-late") it describes the act of presenting an idea, theory, belief, or concept.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

postulate postulates postulated postulating

That being said, they postulate that the raise stemmed in part from a supply-demand imbalance.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 22, 2026

Researchers postulate that repeated exposure of this sort allowed the virus to push into the cells — a brute force entry more than a lock-picking.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 5, 2024

We don't know, but the postquantum theory doesn't require the measurement postulate, because the classicality of spacetime infects quantum systems and causes them to localise.

From Science Daily ● Dec. 4, 2023

Conversely, however, you could postulate that there are other infinities between the cardinality of the natural and real numbers—and encounter no problems either.

From Scientific American ● Jul. 13, 2023

As physicists built bigger and more ambitious machines, they began to find or postulate particles or particle families seemingly without number: muons, pions, hyperons, mesons, K-mesons, Higgs bosons, intermediate vector bosons, baryons, tachyons.

From "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson

The "capture" hypothesis meanwhile postulates that the moons are asteroids from the outer Solar System that were captured by Mars' gravity.

From Barron's ● Aug. 16, 2026

The team postulates that the iSN04-anchored nucleolin alters gene expression and Wnt signaling.

From Science Daily ● Oct. 10, 2023

If this Little Man Theory is to be acknowledged and ultimately accepted, it must measure up to the call of any theory for testable hypotheses or postulates.

From Salon ● Sep. 10, 2023

There’s also string theory, which describes the universe as made of almost unimaginably small vibrating strings and, in current versions, postulates the existence of at least 10 dimensions.

From Scientific American ● Aug. 19, 2023

I started to think a lot about infinity, and what it was like there, and how all the postulates and theorems and principles were true across all the universe.

From "October Sky" by Homer Hickam

Because they found the melittin gene only in bees, the researchers also invalidated the hypothesis that it belongs to a group of venom genes postulated for stinging insects called aculeatoxins.

From Science Daily ● Nov. 29, 2023

Just as a thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger postulated that a cat could be in a quantum state that is both dead and alive, a qubit can be both 1 and 0 simultaneously.

From New York Times ● Jun. 14, 2023

So Gasca and a wide array of City Section coaches have postulated something needed to change with seedings.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 14, 2023

"Disinformation runs rampant on online forums because there's no one checking," Simon postulated.

From Salon ● Jan. 30, 2023

Any book that postulated an escape, I would have thought, would have been anathema to the superintendent.

From "Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing" by Ted Conover

The research is anchored in a theory postulating that emotions are generated when human cognition evaluates events from various perspectives.

From Science Daily ● Jun. 4, 2024

“I love Mario, and I don’t want to have a thing with him,” he said, before postulating that he and Paciorek did possibly coin the baseball expression “emergency swing.”

From Seattle Times ● Jul. 8, 2023

HGT has been shown to be an ever-present phenomenon, with many evolutionists postulating a major role for this process in evolution, thus complicating the simple tree model.

From Textbooks ● Jun. 9, 2022

You wouldn’t think this because what needs explaining is why this monkey—the only one you’ve actually observed—is writing English, and postulating other monkeys doesn’t explain what this monkey is doing.

From Scientific American ● Jan. 10, 2021

Flamsteed was one of the first people to suggest that the phenomenon was really a single object, postulating that it had been repelled from the Sun by some sort of magnetic effect.

From "The Scientists" by John Gribbin

Related Words

• hypothesize
• posit
• presuppose
• theorize