determination

[ dih-tur-muh-ney-shuhn ]

See synonyms for determination on Thesaurus.com

noun

the act of coming to a decision or of fixing or settling a purpose.
ascertainment, as after observation or investigation: determination of a ship's latitude.

the information ascertained; solution.
the settlement of a dispute, question, etc., as by authoritative decision.
the decision or settlement arrived at or pronounced.
the quality of being resolute; firmness of purpose.
a fixed purpose or intention: It is my determination to suppress vice.
the fixing or settling of amount, limit, character, etc.: the determination of a child's allowance.
fixed direction or tendency toward some object or end.
Chiefly Law. conclusion or termination.
Embryology. the fixation of the fate of a cell or group of cells, especially before actual morphological or functional differentiation occurs.
Logic.
- the act of rendering a notion more precise by the addition of differentiating characteristics.
- the definition of a concept in terms of its constituent elements.

Origin of determination

First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin dēterminātiōn-, stem of dēterminātiō “boundary, conclusion,” literally “a bounding,” equivalent to dētermināt(us) “bounded” (past participle of dētermināre “to bound, limit”; see determine) + -iō -ion

Other words from determination

in·ter·de·ter·mi·na·tion, noun
non·de·ter·mi·na·tion, noun
re·de·ter·mi·na·tion, noun

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

How to use determination in a sentence

A spokeswoman for City Attorney Mara Elliott noted that a civil court would make this determination.
Despite New Removal Process, Beiser Likely to Stay on School Board | Will Huntsberry | November 17, 2020 | Voice of San Diego
In her determination to prove them wrong, Harper runs a terrible risk of proving them right.
In HBO’s sordid but watchable ‘Industry,’ the world now belongs to the zuppies | Hank Stuever | November 8, 2020 | Washington Post
That’s because each organization makes its own determination on calling races for the states.
Who won Arizona? Why the call still differs by media organization. | Elahe Izadi | November 5, 2020 | Washington Post
By law, the State Department was supposed to make a determination within 20 business days.
The State Department wouldn’t reveal its payments to Mar-a-Lago. Here’s how we found them. | David Fahrenthold | October 30, 2020 | Washington Post
That was probably for simple tasks such as disambiguation and named entity determination on very short pieces of text and sentences to understand the difference between two possible meanings in the words in queries.
Could Google passage indexing be leveraging BERT? | Dawn Anderson | October 29, 2020 | Search Engine Land

British Dictionary definitions for determination

determination

/ (dɪˌtɜːmɪˈneɪʃən) /

noun

the act or an instance of making a decision
the condition of being determined; resoluteness

the act or an instance of ending an argument by the opinion or decision of an authority
the act or an instance of fixing or settling the quality, limit, position, etc, of something
a decision or opinion reached, rendered, or settled upon
a resolute movement towards some object or end
law the termination of an estate or interest
law the decision reached by a court of justice on a disputed matter
logic
- the process of qualifying or limiting a proposition or concept
- the qualifications or limitations used in this process
the condition of embryonic tissues of being able to develop into only one particular tissue or organ in the adult

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

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