METAPHYSICAL

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does metaphysical mean? 

• METAPHYSICAL (adjective)
  The adjective METAPHYSICAL has 3 senses:

1. pertaining to or of the nature of metaphysics

2. transcending physical matter or the laws of nature

3. highly abstract and overly theoretical

  Familiarity information: METAPHYSICAL used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• METAPHYSICAL (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Pertaining to or of the nature of metaphysics

Classified under:

Relational adjectives (pertainyms)

Context example:

metaphysical philosophy

Pertainym:

metaphysics (the philosophical study of being and knowing)

Derivation:

metaphysics (the philosophical study of being and knowing)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Transcending physical matter or the laws of nature

Context example:

metaphysical forces

Similar:

supernatural (not existing in nature or subject to explanation according to natural laws; not physical or material)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Highly abstract and overly theoretical

Context example:

metaphysical reasoning

Similar:

theoretic; theoretical (concerned primarily with theories or hypotheses rather than practical considerations)

 Context examples 

The place where something begins or comes from in either the sense of a physical location or a metaphysical source.

(Origin, NCI Thesaurus)

Her father liked the metaphysical streak which had unconsciously got into it, so that was allowed to remain though she had her doubts about it.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward substance of things or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man that occupied me, still my inquiries were directed to the metaphysical, or in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the world.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Personally, he was an intellectual moralist, and more offending to him than platitudinous pomposity was the morality of those about him, which was a curious hotchpotch of the economic, the metaphysical, the sentimental, and the imitative.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Well, said Jo, laughing, if my people are 'philosophical and metaphysical', it isn't my fault, for I know nothing about such things, except what I hear father say, sometimes.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

In spite of their Unitarian proclivities and their masks of conservative broadmindedness, they were two generations behind interpretative science: their mental processes were mediaeval, while their thinking on the ultimate data of existence and of the universe struck him as the same metaphysical method that was as young as the youngest race, as old as the cave-man, and older—the same that moved the first Pleistocene ape-man to fear the dark; that moved the first hasty Hebrew savage to incarnate Eve from Adam's rib; that moved Descartes to build an idealistic system of the universe out of the projections of his own puny ego; and that moved the famous British ecclesiastic to denounce evolution in satire so scathing as to win immediate applause and leave his name a notorious scrawl on the page of history.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

By-and-by, when you've got a name, you can afford to digress, and have philosophical and metaphysical people in your novels, said Amy, who took a strictly practical view of the subject.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)