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
The first question, then, for the historian should be, What accounts does this nation give of its early history? the second, What account of this nation's early history can be obtained ab extra?
From An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 by Cusack, Mary Frances
Viewed ab extra, there is no doubt the boldest policy is the best.
From The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Volume 1 by Gwynn, Stephen Lucius
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
As long as there was any thing ab extra to conquer, the state advanced: when nothing remained but what was Roman, then, as a matter of course, civil war began.
From Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge by Coleridge, Henry Nelson
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.
