sorites

American  

[saw-rahy-teez, soh-] / sɔˈraɪ tiz, soʊ- /

noun

Logic.

1. a form of argument having several premises and one conclusion, capable of being resolved into a chain of syllogisms, the conclusion of each of which is a premise of the next.

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sorites British  

/ sɒˈraɪtiːz /

noun

1. logic

   1. a polysyllogism in which the premises are arranged so that intermediate conclusions are omitted, being understood, and only the final conclusion is stated

   2. a paradox of the form

      these few grains of sand do not constitute a heap, and the addition of a single grain never makes what is not yet a heap into a heap: so no matter how many single grains one adds it never becomes a heap

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Other Word Forms

• soritic
  adjective
• soritical
  adjective

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Etymology

Origin of sorites

1545–55; < Latin sōrītēs < Greek sōreítēs literally, heaped, piled up, derivative of sōrós a heap

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

sorites

Kindly observe the neat gradations, the artistic sorites of Mpongwe lies.

From Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 by Sir Richard Francis Burton

Stop, reader; you have not the whole of this sorites.

From Apology of the Augsburg Confession by Philipp Melanchthon

He has himself admitted a kind of sorites of indebtedness to Diderot, Sterne, Swift, Rabelais, Folengo, Lucian, and Petronius.

From A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 To the Close of the 19th Century by George Saintsbury

In some of my lectures at Harvard I have spoken of what I call the 'faith-ladder,' as something quite different from the sorites of the logic-books, yet seeming to have an analogous form.

From A Pluralistic Universe Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the Present Situation in Philosophy by William James

For the regular sorites the following rules may be laid down.

From Deductive Logic by St. George William Joseph Stock

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