the action of perverting something (turning it to a wrong use); "it was a perversion of justice"
an aberrant sexual practice that is preferred to normal intercourse
a curve that reverses the direction of something; "the tendrils of the plant exhibited perversion"; "perversion also shows up in kinky telephone cords"
the capacity for rational thought or inference or discrimination; "we are told that man is endowed with reason and capable of distinguishing good from evil"
a fact that logically justifies some premise or conclusion; "there is reason to believe he is lying"
an explanation of the cause of some phenomenon; "the reason a steady state was never reached was that the back pressure built up too slowly"
a rational motive for a belief or action; "the reason that war was declared"; "the grounds for their declaration"
think logically; "The children must learn to reason"
decide by reasoning; draw or come to a conclusion; "We reasoned that it was cheaper to rent than to buy a house"
a show of military force or preparedness; "he confused the enemy with feints and demonstrations"
a public display of group feelings (usually of a political nature); "there were violent demonstrations against the war"
proof by a process of argument or a series of proposition proving an asserted conclusion
a visual presentation showing how something works; "the lecture was accompanied by dramatic demonstrations"; "the lecturer shot off a pistol as a demonstration of the startle response"
the act of distorting something so it seems to mean something it was not intended to mean
a change for the worse
a change (usually undesired) in the waveform of an acoustic or analog electrical signal; the difference between two measurements of a signal (as between the input and output signal); "heavy metal guitar players use vacuum tube amplifiers to produce extreme distortion"
(law) an explanation of the fundamental reasons (especially an explanation of the working of some device in terms of laws of nature); "the rationale for capital punishment"; "the principles of internal-combustion engines"
any personal belief about how to live or how to deal with a situation; "self-indulgence was his only philosophy"; "my father's philosophy of child-rearing was to let mother do it"
the rational investigation of questions about existence and knowledge and ethics
of a proposition that is necessarily true independent of fact or experience; "`all spinsters are unmarried' is an analytic proposition"
expressing a grammatical category by using two or more words rather than inflection
using or skilled in using analysis (i.e., separating a whole--intellectual or substantial--into its elemental parts or basic principles); "an analytic experiment"; "an analytic approach"; "a keenly analytic man"; "analytical reasoning"; "an analytical mind"
using or subjected to a methodology using algebra and calculus; "analytic statics"
a semivowel produced with the tongue near the palate (like the initial sound in the English word `yeast')
produced with the front of the tongue near or touching the hard palate (as `y') or with the blade of the tongue near the hard palate (as `ch' in `chin' or `j' in `gin')
relating to or lying near the palate; "palatal index"; "the palatine tonsils"