principle

Definition

A fundamental assumption or guiding belief.

Etymology

From Middle English principle, from Old French principe, from Latin prīncipium (“beginning, foundation”), from prīnceps (“first”). By surface analysis, prīmus (“first”) + -ceps (“catcher”); the former ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *preh₂- (“before”); see also prince.

Example Sentences

• "We need some sort of principles to reason from."
• "Let us consider ‘my dog is asleep on the floor’ again. Frege thinks that this sentence can be analyzed in various different ways. Instead of treating it as expressing the application of __ is asleep on the floor to my dog, we can think of it as expressing the application of the concept my dog is asleep on __ to the object the floor (see Frege 1919). Frege recognizes what is now a commonplace in the logical analysis of natural language. We can attribute more than one logical form to a single sentence. Let us call this the principle of multiple analyses. Frege does not claim that the principle always holds, but as we shall see, modern type theory does claim this."
• "The principle of least privilege holds that a process should only receive the permissions it needs."

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