Ul·ti·mate a.
1. Farthest; most remote in space or time; extreme; last; final.
My harbor, and my ultimate repose. --Milton.
Many actions apt to procure fame are not conductive to this our ultimate happiness. --Addison.
2. Last in a train of progression or consequences; tended toward by all that precedes; arrived at, as the last result; final.
Those ultimate truths and those universal laws of thought which we can not rationally contradict. --Coleridge.
3. Incapable of further analysis; incapable of further division or separation; constituent; elemental; as, an ultimate particle; an ultimate constituent of matter.
Ultimate analysis Chem., organic analysis. See under Organic.
Ultimate belief. See under Belief.
Ultimate ratio Math., the limiting value of a ratio, or that toward which a series tends, and which it does not pass.
Syn: -- Final; conclusive. See Final.
Be·lief n.
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.
Belief admits of all degrees, from the slightest suspicion to the fullest assurance. --Reid.
2. Theol. A persuasion of the truths of religion; faith.
No man can attain [to] belief by the bare contemplation of heaven and earth. --Hooker.
3. The thing believed; the object of belief.
Superstitious prophecies are not only the belief of fools, but the talk sometimes of wise men. --Bacon.
4. A tenet, or the body of tenets, held by the advocates of any class of views; doctrine; creed.
In the heat of persecution to which Christian belief was subject upon its first promulgation. --Hooker.
Ultimate belief, a first principle incapable of proof; an intuitive truth; an intuition.
Syn: -- Credence; trust; reliance; assurance; opinion.
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