in·de·ter·mi·nate

(ĭn′dĭ-tûr′mə-nĭt)

adj.

a. Not precisely determined, determinable, or established: a person of indeterminate age.

b. Not precisely fixed, as to extent, size, nature, or number: an indeterminate number of plant species in the jungle.

c. Lacking clarity or precision, as in meaning; vague: an indeterminate turn of phrase.

d. Not fixed or known in advance: an indeterminate future.

e. Not leading up to a definite result or ending: an indeterminate campaign.

2. Botany Not terminating in a flower and continuing to grow at the apex: an indeterminate inflorescence.

3. Mathematics Having more than one variable and an infinite number of solutions, such as the equation 5x² + 3y = 10.

[Middle English, from Latin indēterminātus : in-, not; see in-¹ + dēterminātus, determined; see determinate.]

in′de·ter′mi·nate·ly adv.

in′de·ter′mi·nate·ness, in′de·ter′mi·na′tion (-nā′shən) n.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun

indetermination - the quality of being vague and poorly defined

indefiniteness, indefinity, indeterminacy, indeterminateness

uncertainness, uncertainty, precariousness - being unsettled or in doubt or dependent on chance; "the uncertainty of the outcome"; "the precariousness of his income"

inconclusiveness - the quality of being inconclusive

Translations

imprecisione indeterminazione

indetermination

n (= indecisiveness) → Entschlusslosigkeit f, → Unschlüssigkeit f, → Unentschiedenheit f

Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007

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References in periodicals archive

The tout autre (or differance) and sunyata are not strictly equivalent, but what is irreducible and singular about such not-yet-formalized "meta-forms" is their proper emergence from an unconditioned indetermination of all regulative ideas and practices.

Violence and (non-)resistance: Buddhist Ahimsa and its existential Aporias

A rich indetermination gives them, by means of a semantic rarefaction, the function of articulating a second, poetic geography on top of the geography of the literal, forbidden or permitted meaning.

Free fall: the state of interdisciplinary and experimental performance: (a netless net)

Strategy of Indetermination, by giving a proposition a colouring of lesser semantic, qualitative and quantitative explicitness as well as of uncertainty, vagueness and fuzziness.

The mitigation of scientific claims in research papers: a comparative study

(7) We witness a progressive indetermination of speech: in other words, it becomes difficult to 'bend the signifier as possibility towards the signified as reality' (8); untied from univocal referents, discourse takes on an 'obscure allusiveness', abiding within the chaotic domain of the power-to-say (a power-to-say that goes beyond any spoken word).

Natural-historical diagrams: the 'new global' movement and the biological invariant

No doubt Aristotle uses [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] to qualify--among other things--the indetermination of matter (a quasi-nothing that can become almost anything) or the incompleteness of mathematical series.

The actual infinite as a day or the games

Deux sequences semblent cependant vouloir aller plus loin, nous rapprocher davantage de cette sorte d'indetermination semantique, sauf que l'oeil du spectateur n'est pas a la hauteur de la tache et qu'elles ne restent insolubles que dans l'abstraction de l'analyse.

Figures indecidables et cinema surrealiste

Although the spirit of the clauses of free establishment and exercise both search for the neutrality of public performances with respect to the diverse confessions, a strong indetermination on what is understood by neutrality persists.

Smithian perspective on the markets of beliefs: public policies and religion

Becoming-animal puts forth "an objective zone of indetermination or uncertainty" (237), and presents at best a haziness before all technics of rational perception.

The question of community in Deleuze and Guattari (I): anti-community