Other forms: inductions
An induction is your way in — the morning somebody walks you round the fire exits, the timesheets and the coffee machine on your first day. Every new job, course and hospital ward has one, and it takes into: your induction into the company.
The other induction is a way of thinking, and most of science runs on it: you look at a hundred cases, they all behave the same way, and you conclude that they always will. Every swan anybody had ever seen was white until Australia turned up, which is the famous hole in the method — induction gives you a rule that has held so far, not a proof. Deduction runs the other way, from the rule down to the case. Two more corners of English use the word: an induction hob heats the pan itself by magnetism, and doctors speak of the induction of labour when a birth is started off rather than waited for. It is a formal word in all of them.
1nounorientationThe process of being formally brought into a job, a course or an organisation.~64%
“The induction lasts two days and covers fire safety.”
formal in this meaning — an editor’s judgement
synonyms: orientation, initiation
2nouninductionReasoning that moves from particular cases up to a general rule.~12%
“The argument rests on induction from a handful of observations.”
formal in this meaning — an editor’s judgement
synonyms: inference, generalisation
3nounproductionThe production of electricity or magnetism in something by a field nearby.~20%
“An induction hob heats the pan and leaves the ring cool.”
4nounstartingThe starting off of labour by a doctor.~4%
“She was booked in for an induction on the Monday.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 26 sentences found in the wild and placed 25 of them on a sense (1 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
induction is a form of reasoning.
in-DUCK-tion → a DUCK
A white duck walks past your chair. Then a second white duck, then a third, then a hundred more, every one of them white. You open your notebook and write in big letters: all ducks are white.
hooks ontoduck
Latin indūcō is to lead in — built on dūcō, to lead, the verb sitting under produce, reduce, introduce and conduct. An induction is a leading-in whichever kind you mean: on your first morning somebody leads you into the building, and in an argument the evidence leads you up out of the cases into a rule.
Proto-Indo-European
*dewk-
Latin
inductiō
Old French
induction
Middle English
induction
English, today
induction
Built from
Middle English induction, from Old French induction, from Latin inductiō, from indūcō (“to lead”). by surface analysis, induct + -ion or induce + -tion.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA