Word Direct Answers

What does "indefinite" mean?

Indefinite: Having no determined or certain limits; large and unmeasured, though not infinite; unlimited; as indefinite space; the indefinite extension of a straight line. Though it is not infinite, it may be indefinite; though it is not boundless in itself, it may be so to human comprehension. Spectator.

Additional senses

  1. 2.Boundless; infinite. [R.] Indefinite and omnipresent God, Inhabiting eternity. W. Thompson (1745).
  2. 3.(Bot.) Too numerous or variable to make a particular enumeration important; -- said of the parts of a flower, and the like. Also, indeterminate. Indefinite article (Gram.), the word a or an, used with nouns to denote any one of a common or general class. -- Indefinite inflorescence. (Bot.) See Indeterminate inflorescence, under Indeterminate. -- Indefinite proposition (Logic), a statement whose subject is a common term, with nothing to indicate distribution or nondistribution; as, Man is mortal. -- Indefinite term (Logic), a negative term; as, the not-good.

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