- principle
- principle, axiom, fundamental, law, theorem are comparable when they denote a proposition or other formulation stating a fact or a generalization accepted as true and basic.Principle applies to a generalization that provides a basis for reasoning or a guide for conduct or procedure{
the principle of free speech
}{his remarkable grasp of principle in the remaining field, that of historical geography— Farrington
}{the same hankering as their pious ancestors for a cozy universe, a closed system of certainties erected upon a single principle— Muller
}{the principle was established that no officer or employee . . . was entitled to any classified information whatever unless it was necessary for the performance of his duties— Baxter
}{I do not mean to assert this pedantically as an absolute rule, but as a principle guiding school authorities— Russell
}Axiom can apply to a principle that is not open to dispute because self-evident and is usually one upon which a structure of reasoning is or may be erected{the axioms of Euclidean geometry
}Perhaps more frequently the term implies a principle universally accepted or regarded as worthy of acceptance rather than one necessarily true{the journalistic axiom that there is nothing as dead as yesterday's newspaper—G. W. Johnson
}{the superficial commonplaces which pass as axioms in our popular intellectual milieu— Cohen
}Fundamental usually applies to a principle, but sometimes a fact, so essential to a philosophy, religion, science, or art that its rejection would destroy the intellectual structure resting upon it{the fundamentals of scientific research
}{developed the arch and other fundamentals of architecture— R. W. Murray
}{what they deemed the fundamentals of the Christian faith— Latourette
}Law applies to a formulation stating an order or relation of phenomena which is regarded as always holding good{the conquest of nature's procreative forces, through the discovery of the laws of agriculture and animal husbandry— R. W. Murray
}{the laws of the rain and of the seasons here are tropic laws— M. S. Douglas
}{it is a law that no two electrons may occupy the same orbit— Eddington
}Theorem applies to a proposition that admits of rational proof and, usually, is logically necessary to succeeding logical steps in a structure of reasoning{theoretical economics puts the patterns of uniformity in a coherent system [of which] the basic propositions are called assumptions or postulates, the derived propositions are called theorems— Lange
}{the error that was to prove most durable of all, the theorem that only a very short land traverse would be found necessary from Missouri to Pacific waters— De Voto
}
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
