ascertainment

English

Etymology

From ascertain ‎ -ment.

Noun

ascertainment (countable and uncountable, plural ascertainments)

The act of ascertaining.
the ascertainment of facts
- 1647, anonymous author, A Letter Really Written by a Moderate Cavallier to an Intelligent and Moderate Independent of Trust and Credit in the Now Marching Army‎^[1], London, page 6:
  You have a great Worke to doe, to restore Religion and Law, upon which depends the Kings re-enthronement, and re-investure with his just rights, the Parliaments ascertainment of their just power and equall Priviledges, and the peoples restorement to their known Liberties and Properties […]
- 1758, William Hawkins, Tracts in Divinity‎^[2], volume 2, Oxford, page 321:
  […] Mr. Pope himself appears to me […] now and then to have imagin’d Proprieties, or cover’d Defects with a seeming View rather to the Honour of his Author at all Events, than to the precise Ascertainment of Truth.
- 1819, Walter Scott, chapter 1, in The Bride of Lammermoor‎^[3], Edinburgh: Archibald Constable, page 15:
  […] I judged it proper that there should be an exact ascertainment of my legal rights by the decree of a court of justice,
- 1860, George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss‎^[4], Edinburgh: William Blackwood, Volume 2, Book 4, Chapter 1, p. 151:
  […] does not science tell us that its highest striving is after the ascertainment of a unity which shall bind the smallest things with the greatest?
- 1974, Robert M[aynard] Pirsig, chapter 22, in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values, New York, N.Y.: William Morrow & Company, →ISBN, part 3, page 266:
  […] what we ought to aim at is less the ascertainment of resemblances and differences than the recognition of likenesses hidden under apparent divergences.

Derived terms