1Relating to or done by all people or things in the world or in a particular group; applicable to all cases: universal adult suffrage the incidents caused universal concern
More example sentences
- Trinidad was granted universal adult suffrage in 1945.
- After World War II, universal adult suffrage was introduced and a party system was developed.
- It is rooted in a specific place and culture, but the concerns are universal.
1.3(Of a tool or machine) adjustable to or appropriate for all requirements.
- As a universal machine, the computer and particularly its software are the centre of interest.
- Today the computer is the universal machine that is driving the Information Age.
- There's a yawning chasm between their user-experience of partially-universal machines and universal machines.
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1.2 Philosophy A term or concept of general application.
- If we move from universals to concepts in general, we can see how category theory could be useful even in cognitive science.
- The Idea is composed of universals, general concepts, whereas Nature comprises myriads of particular things.
- Abelard defends his thesis that universals are nothing but words by arguing that ontological realism about universals is incoherent.
1.3 Philosophy A nature or essence signified by a general term.
- Human existence has remained under the influence of myths, these being claims to timeless and incontrovertible truths - in essence, universals.
- Secondly, are the universals of human nature claimed by academic psychology more accurately seen as Western or Euroamerican patterns?
- Conceptualists hold that universals are mental constructions and traditional nominalists hold that either universals are linguistic constructions or they do not exist at all.
1.4 Linguistics A universal grammatical rule or linguistic feature.
- And I suspect that it's a linguistic universal for farm animals, crops and food products to figure in terms of disdain and abuse.
- There are aspects of anaphoric universals which clearly are of a grammatical nature; there are also aspects of anaphoric universals which equally clearly are of a pragmatic nature.
- Because of this, the sentence as understood in the Western linguistic tradition has not yet been unequivocally established as a universal of language.
- Example sentences
- The current government has surely undermined the universality of Medicare.
- Secondly, the universality of human rights is regularly questioned in these countries.
- So now the big question: is the album really autobiographical or about the universality of heartache?
Words that rhyme with universaldisbursal, dispersal, Purcell, rehearsal, reversal, succursal, tercel, transversal, traversal