absolute

adj

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.

1. Free of restrictions, limitations, qualifications or conditions; unconditional.

   “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 [...]”

2. Free of restrictions, limitations, qualifications or conditions; unconditional.

   “An absolute monarch is free from all forcible restraint, and so far as he is absolute[,] from all legal restraints of positive laws.”

3. Free of restrictions, limitations, qualifications or conditions; unconditional.

   “The peddler stopped, and tapped her on the head, / With absolute forefinger, brown and ringed.”

   “[…] the more absolute the ruler, the more absolute the revolution will be which replaces him.”

4. Free from imperfection, perfect, complete; especially, perfectly embodying a quality in its essential characteristics or to its highest degree.

   “absolute purity, absolute liberty”

   “So absolute she seems, / And in herself complete.”

5. Pure, free from mixture or adulteration; unmixed.

   “absolute alcohol”

6. Complete, utter, outright; unmitigated, not qualified or diminished in any way.

   “an absolute denial of all charges”

   “When caught, he told an absolute lie.”

7. 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.”

   “[...] 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.”

8. Certain; free from doubt or uncertainty (e.g. a person, opinion or prediction).

   “I am absolute ’twas very Cloten.”

   “The colour of my hair—he cannot tell, Or answers "dark," at random,—while, be sure, He's absolute on the figure, live or ten, Of my last subscription.”

9. 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.”

10. Independent of arbitrary units of measurement, standards, or properties; not comparative or relative.

    “absolute velocity, absolute motion, absolute position”

    “His experiments led him to infer that the boiling point of the substance is probably below 9 degrees absolute.”

11. Independent of arbitrary units of measurement, standards, or properties; not comparative or relative.
12. Independent of arbitrary units of measurement, standards, or properties; not comparative or relative.
13. 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".
14. 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".
15. 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".
16. 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".

    “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.”

17. 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".
18. 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".
19. As measured using an absolute value.

    “absolute deviation”

    “absolute square”

20. Indicating an expression that is true for all real numbers, or of all values of the variable; unconditional.
21. Pertaining to a grading system based on the knowledge of the individual and not on the comparative knowledge of the group of students.
22. Independent of (references to) other arts; expressing things (beauty, ideas, etc) only in one art.

    “absolute music”

23. 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.”

24. Absolved; free.

noun

1. That which is totally unconditioned, unrestricted, pure, perfect, or complete; that which can be thought of without relation to others.