postulate

UK/ˈpɒstjʊlət/US/ˈpɑst͡ʃələt/

verbC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #14,528 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: postulated, postulates, postulating

To postulate is to assume something as a starting point. Postulate a cause, let us postulate, postulated the existence of it.

It claims nothing about truth — a postulate is granted so the argument can proceed, and if the conclusions fail the postulate is what you go back and question. Euclid's fifth postulate resisted proof for two thousand years, and rejecting it produced whole new geometries.

Definitions of postulate

1verbpostulateTo assume something as a starting point.C1
“Astronomers postulated an unseen planet to explain the strange orbit of Uranus.”

postulate is an assuming.

Where it comes from

Latin postulare means to demand or claim. A postulate is something demanded at the outset.

Latin
postulātum
English, today
postulate

Borrowed from Latin postulātum. See -ate for more. Cognate with French postulat.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Academic English

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postulate in the wild

An axiom, postulate, or assumption, is a statement that is taken to be true, to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning and arguments.
Axiom
Non-logical axioms may also be called "postulates", "assumptions" or "proper axioms".
Axiom
Euclid's approach consists in assuming a small set of intuitively appealing axioms (postulates) and deducing many other propositions (theorems) from these.
Euclidean geometry
One of those is the parallel postulate which relates to parallel lines on a Euclidean plane.
Euclidean geometry
Koch's postulates ( KOKH) are four criteria designed to establish a causal relationship between a microbe and a disease.
Koch's postulates

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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