absolute

Etymology

First attested around 1380. From Middle English absolut, from Middle French absolut, from Latin absolūtus (“unconditional; unfettered; completed”), perfect passive participle of absolvō (“loosen, set free, complete”), from ab (“away”) + solvo (“to loose”). Influenced in part by Old French absolu. Compare absolve.

adj

1. Free of restrictions, limitations, qualifications or conditions; unconditional.
   1658, Samuel Hoard, God[']s Love to Mankind, Manifested, by disprooving his absolute decree for their damnation:
   While Americans enjoy an almost absolute freedom to name their children whatever they please, in Germany the State (as public guardian of the good of the child) restricts parents … 2005, Names, volume 53, page 238
   1. Unrestricted by laws, a constitution, or parliamentary or judicial or other checks; (legally) unlimited in power, especially if despotic.
      An absolute monarch is free from all forcible restraint, and so far as he is absolute[,] from all legal restraints of positive laws. 1846, George Gillespie, The Presbyterian's Armoury
      1. Characteristic of an absolutist ruler: domineering, peremptory.
         The peddler stopped, and tapped her on the head, / With absolute forefinger, brown and ringed. 1856, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh
         […] the more absolute the ruler, the more absolute the revolution will be which replaces him. 1962, Hannah Arendt, On Revolution, published 1990, page 155
2. Free from imperfection, perfect, complete; especially, perfectly embodying a quality in its essential characteristics or to its highest degree.
   absolute purity, absolute liberty
   Indeed, my lord, it is a most absolute and excellent horse. 1599, William Shakespeare, Henry V
3. Pure, free from mixture or adulteration; unmixed.
   absolute alcohol
4. Complete, utter, outright; unmitigated, not qualified or diminished in any way.
   When caught, he told an absolute lie.
   an absolute denial of all charges
   You're an absolute genius!
   The growth and acceptance of this idea followed Amartya Sen's theory of exchange entitlements, which suggested that famines occur not from an absolute lack of food but from people's inability to obtain access to that food. 2008, Household Economy Approach, page 3
5. (very occasionally postpositive) Positive, certain; unquestionable; not in doubt.
   Yet if the register is not to be absolute evidence of proprietorship, it is clear that some investigation of title would still be necessary. 1862, The Solicitors' Journal and Reporter, volume 6, page 365
   … and in the absence of other signs, or when these latter are inconclusive, it is extremely useful. But it is not, under any circumstances, absolute evidence of the syphilitic nature of a given symptom or set of symptoms. 1913, International Record of Medicine and General Practice Clinics
   Unless the determined lease to which the easements relate has been registered with title absolute and the easements have been entered without qualification in the register for that title, evidence must be lodged to prove … 2021, HM Land Registry Practice Guide 26
6. (archaic) Certain; free from doubt or uncertainty (e.g. a person, opinion or prediction).
7. (especially philosophy) Fundamental, ultimate, intrinsic; not relative; independent of references or relations to other things or standards.
   the doctrine that absolute knowledge of things is possible, an absolute principle
   Absolute rights and duties are such as pertain to man in a state of nature as contradistinguished from relative rights and duties, or such as pertain to him in his social relations.
8. (physics) Independent of arbitrary units of measurement, standards, or properties; not comparative or relative.
   1. Having reference to or derived in the simplest manner from the fundamental units of mass, time, and length.
   2. Relating to the absolute temperature scale (based on absolute zero); kelvin.
9. (grammar) Not immediately dependent on the other parts of the sentence; not in a syntactical relation with other parts of a text, or qualifying the text as a whole rather than any single word in it, like "it being over" in "it being over, she left".
   1. (of a case form) Syntactically connected to the rest of the sentence in an atypical manner, or not relating to or depending on it, like in the nominative absolute or genitive absolute, accusative absolute or ablative absolute.
   2. (of an adjective or possessive pronoun) Lacking a modified substantive, like "hungry" in "feed the hungry".
   3. (of a comparative or superlative) Expressing a relative term without a definite comparison, like "older" in "an older person should be treated with respect".
   4. (of an adjective form) Positive; not graded (not comparative or superlative).
      Even when the absolute form of an adverb ends in -ly, the comparative and superlative are identical with the corresponding forms of the adjective: badly, worse, worst. 1991, English Grammar, 3rd edition
   5. (of a usually transitive verb) Having no direct object, like "kill" in "if looks could kill".
   6. (of Celtic languages) Being or pertaining to an inflected verb that is not preceded by any number of particles or compounded with a preverb.
10. (mathematics) As measured using an absolute value.
    absolute deviation
    absolute square
    mean absolute difference
11. (mathematics) Indicating an expression that is true for all real numbers, or of all values of the variable; unconditional.
12. (education) Pertaining to a grading system based on the knowledge of the individual and not on the comparative knowledge of the group of students.
13. (art, music, dance) Independent of (references to) other arts; expressing things (beauty, ideas, etc) only in one art.
    absolute music
14. (law, postpositive, formal) Indicating that a tenure or estate in land is not conditional or liable to terminate on (strictly) any occurrence or (sometimes contextually) certain kinds of occurrence.
    A freehold property is an estate in fee simple absolute in possession.
15. (obsolete) Absolved; free.

noun

1. That which exists (or has a certain property, nature, size, etc) independent of references to other standards or external conditions; that which is universally valid; that which is not relative, conditional, qualified or mitigated.
   moral absolutes
   There is a well-known generalization that human rights come before property rights. […] Unqualified absolutes like these do not contain the truth as tested by human experience. What we do say is that human rights and property rights are related to one another, are intertwined with one another, work with and play upon one another. 1987, Harold Bloom, Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, Chelsea House Pub: But if the psychoanalytic mood seems gloomy or pretentious, one may merely think of Anna as a person who comes to deal in absolutes: unconditional demands, total fears, extremities of power and subservience, […] 2002, Jordan Zarren, MSW, DAHB, Jordan I. Zarren, Bruce N. Eimer, Brief Cognitive Hypnosis: Facilitating the Change of Dysfunctional Behavior, Springer Publishing Company, →ISBN, page 97: Notice the use of unconditional absolutes in each of these statements. They are the words always, never, and forever. The illusion of absolutes is the ultimate pathological double bind. Yet the only absolute is that there are no absolutes. 1944, United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs, World Freedom of Press and Radio, Editorials Submitted...: Senate Concurrent Resolution 50, Senate Concurrent Resolution 52, Senate Concurrent Resolution 53, House Concurrent Resolution 97, page 30
   This is important to understand, for when we see that the knowledge of good and evil is an absolute, we realize we can have absolutely no say in what it is or is not. Pause for a moment and consider that. Mathematicians work in absolutes. 2010, Joshua K. Hildebrandt, The Knowledge of Good and Evil: Who Decides What Is Morally Right and Wrong?, AuthorHouse, page 9
   The reason is that we are confronted here with a genuine moral dilemma, i.e. a clash of two moral absolutes – the unconditional right to protection of the fetus from the point of fertilization; and the unconditional protection of the right to choose of the pregnant woman. 2010, Klaus Brinkmann, Idealism Without Limits: Hegel and the Problem of Objectivity, Springer Science & Business Media, page 265
   Often one is dealing not with absolutes (complete stability) but with relative differences in rate (see below). 2012, P. Katsoyannis, The Chemistry of Polypeptides: Essays in Honor of Dr. Leonidas Zervas, Springer Science & Business Media, page 132
   When discussing these concepts, it is unreasonable to expect absolutes. Complete impact, complete compliance with Court decisions, and complete implementation are a myth even for the most admired Supreme Court decisions. 2016, I. Unah, The Supreme Court in American Politics, Springer, page 187
2. (geometry) In a plane, the two imaginary circular points at infinity; in space of three dimensions, the imaginary circle at infinity.
3. (philosophy, usually capitalized, usually preceded by "the") A realm which exists without reference to anything else; that which can be imagined purely by itself; absolute ego.
   Withdrawn as a Buddha he sat, watching the alien world from his perch in the absolute. 1983, Lawrence Durrell, Sebastian (Avignon Quintet), Faber & Faber, published 2004, page 1039
4. (philosophy, usually capitalized, usually preceded by "the") The whole of reality; the totality to which everything is reduced; the unity of spirit and nature; God.
5. (chemistry) A concentrated natural flower oil, used for perfumes; an alcoholic extract of a concrete.
   Complete concentration in a vacuum still at low temperature results in a concentrated flower oil, free from alcohol, the so-called absolute of enfleurage. The crude absolutes of enfleurage are usually of dark color and, because of their fat content, […] 1948, Ernest Guenther, The Essential Oils: History, origin in plants, production, analysis
   The main difference between these and those of indifferent quality is that the former contain flower absolutes in fairly large proportion and the latter either an insignificant quantity or […] 2019, William A. Poucher, Perfumes, Cosmetics and Soaps: The Production, Manufacture and Application of Perfumes: Volume 2, page 57