Belief

4 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Belief \Be*lief"\, n. [OE. bileafe, bileve; cf. AS. gele['a]fa.
     See {Believe}.]
     1. Assent to a proposition or affirmation, or the acceptance
        of a fact, opinion, or assertion as real or true, without
        immediate personal knowledge; reliance upon word or
        testimony; partial or full assurance without positive


        knowledge or absolute certainty; persuasion; conviction;
        confidence; as, belief of a witness; the belief of our
        senses.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              Belief admits of all degrees, from the slightest
              suspicion to the fullest assurance.   --Reid.
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     2. (Theol.) A persuasion of the truths of religion; faith.
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              No man can attain [to] belief by the bare
              contemplation of heaven and earth.    --Hooker.
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     3. The thing believed; the object of belief.
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              Superstitious prophecies are not only the belief of
              fools, but the talk sometimes of wise men. --Bacon.
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     4. A tenet, or the body of tenets, held by the advocates of
        any class of views; doctrine; creed.
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              In the heat of persecution to which Christian belief
              was subject upon its first promulgation. --Hooker.
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     {Ultimate belief}, a first principle incapable of proof; an
        intuitive truth; an intuition. --Sir W. Hamilton.
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     Syn: Credence; trust; reliance; assurance; opinion.
          [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  belief
       n 1: any cognitive content held as true [ant: {unbelief}]
       2: a vague idea in which some confidence is placed; "his
          impression of her was favorable"; "what are your feelings
          about the crisis?"; "it strengthened my belief in his
          sincerity"; "I had a feeling that she was lying" [syn: {impression},
           {feeling}, {notion}, {opinion}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  73 Moby Thesaurus words for "belief":
     a belief, acceptance, acquiescence, arrogance, article of faith,
     assent, assurance, assuredness, axiom, canon, certainty, certitude,
     cocksureness, concept, confidence, confidentness, conviction,
     courage, credence, credibility, credit, credo, creed, dependence,
     doctrine, dogma, eye, faith, feeling, fundamental, hubris, idea,
     intuition, judgement, law, maxim, mind, opinion, orthodoxy,
     overconfidence, oversureness, overweening, overweeningness,
     persuasion, poise, pomposity, positiveness, precept, pride,
     principle, principles, reliance, religion, religious belief,
     religious faith, security, self-assurance, self-confidence,
     self-importance, self-reliance, sentiment, settled belief,
     subjective certainty, sureness, surety, system of beliefs,
     teaching, tenet, theology, tradition, trust, trustworthiness,
     view
  
  

From Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856) [bouvier]:

  BELIEF. The conviction of the mind, arising from evidence received, or from 
  information derived, not from actual perception by our senses, but from. the 
  relation or information of others who have had the means of acquiring actual 
  knowledge of the facts and in whose qualifications for acquiring that 
  knowledge, and retaining it, and afterwards in communicating it, we can 
  place confidence. " Without recurring to the books of metaphysicians' "says 
  Chief Justice Tilghman, 4 Serg. & Rawle, 137, "let any man of plain common 
  sense, examine the operations of, his own mind, he will assuredly find that 
  on different subjects his belief is different. I have a firm belief that, 
  the moon revolves round the earth. I may believe, too, that there are 
  mountains and valleys in the moon; but this belief is not so strong, because 
  the evidence is weaker." Vide 1 Stark. Ev. 41; 2 Pow. Mortg. 555; 1 Ves. 95; 
  12 Ves. 80; 1 P. A. Browne's R 258; 1 Stark. Ev. 127; Dyer, 53; 2 Hawk. c. 
  46, s. 167; 3 Wil. 1, s. 427; 2 Bl. R. 881; Leach, 270; 8 Watts, R. 406; 1 
  Greenl. Ev. Sec. 7-13, a.