acceptation

Noun

1. The meaning (sense) in which a word or expression is understood, or generally received.
   • The term is to be used according to its usual acceptation.
   • My words, in common Acceptation, / Could never give this Provocation - 1731 January 30, John Gay, “Fable: The Dog and the Fox: To a Lawyer”, in Caleb D'Anvers (Nicholas Amhurst), editor, The Craftsman, volume 7, page...
   • In its most proper acceptation, theory means the completed result of philosophical induction from experience. - 1843, John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, volume 2, book 5, chapter 7, page...

   Coordinate Terms: parse parsing

2. Acceptance; reception; favorable reception or regard; the state of being acceptable.
   • Finally, ſome things although not ſo required of neceſſity, that to leave them undone excludeth from Salvation, are notwithſtanding of so great dignity and acceptation with God, that moſt ample reward in Heaven is laid...
   • This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief. - 1769, King James Bible: 1 Timothy:
   • The acceptation of the anti-hegemony clause – President Carter in May 1978 had encouraged the Japanese to agree to it – compelled the Japanese government to confess publicly what everybody knew: omnidirectional...
3. The active divine decision to approve an act or circumstance, held by Scotists to be necessary to render it meritorious.
   • This does not, however, mean that the habit of created charity may be regarded as the formal cause of divine acceptation, considered from the standpoint of the one who elicits the act of acceptation (i.e., God), as this...