From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Belief \Be*lief"\, noun [OE. bileafe, bileve; cf. AS. gele['a]fa. See {Believe}.]
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. --Sir W. Hamilton.
Syn: Credence; trust; reliance; assurance; opinion.
From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
noun
1: any cognitive content held as true [ant: {unbelief}]
2: a vague idea in which some confidence is placed; "his impression of her was favorable"; "what are your feelings about the crisis?"; "it strengthened my belief in his sincerity"; "I had a feeling that she was lying" [syn: {impression}, {feeling}, {notion}, {opinion}]
From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:
73 Moby Thesaurus words for "belief": a belief, acceptance, acquiescence, arrogance, article of faith, assent, assurance, assuredness, axiom, canon, certainty, certitude, cocksureness, concept, confidence, confidentness, conviction, courage, credence, credibility, credit, credo, creed, dependence, doctrine, dogma, eye, faith, feeling, fundamental, hubris, idea, intuition, judgement, law, maxim, mind, opinion, orthodoxy, overconfidence, oversureness, overweening, overweeningness, persuasion, poise, pomposity, positiveness, precept, pride, principle, principles, reliance, religion, religious belief, religious faith, security, self-assurance, self-confidence, self-importance, self-reliance, sentiment, settled belief, subjective certainty, sureness, surety, system of beliefs, teaching, tenet, theology, tradition, trust, trustworthiness, view
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