From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Derivation \Der'i*va"tion\, noun [L. derivatio: cf. F. d['e]rivation. See {Derive}.]
1. A leading or drawing off of water from a stream or source. [Obs.] --T. Burnet.
2. The act of receiving anything from a source; the act of procuring an effect from a cause, means, or condition, as profits from capital, conclusions or opinions from evidence.
As touching traditional communication, . . . I do not doubt but many of those truths have had the help of that derivation. --Sir M. Hale.
3. The act of tracing origin or descent, as in grammar or genealogy; as, the derivation of a word from an Aryan root.
4. The state or method of being derived; the relation of origin when established or asserted.
5. That from which a thing is derived.
6. That which is derived; a derivative; a deduction.
From the Euphrates into an artificial derivation of that river. --Gibbon.
7. (Math.) The operation of deducing one function from another according to some fixed law, called the law of derivation, as the operation of differentiation or of integration.
8. (Med.) A drawing of humors or fluids from one part of the body to another, to relieve or lessen a morbid process.
9. The formation of a word from its more original or radical elements; also, a statement of the origin and history of a word. [Webster 1913 Suppl.]
From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
noun
1: the source from which something derives (i.e. comes or issues); "he prefers shoes of Italian derivation"
2: (historical linguistics) an explanation of the historical origins of a word or phrase [syn: {deriving}, {etymologizing}]
3: a line of reasoning that shows how a conclusion follows logically from accepted propositions
4: (descriptive linguistics) the process whereby new words are formed from existing words or bases by affixation: 'singer' from 'sing'; 'undo' from 'do'
5: inherited properties shared with others of your bloodline [syn: {ancestry}, {lineage}, {filiation}]
6: drawing of fluid or inflammation away from a diseased part of the body
7: drawing off water from its main channel as for irrigation
From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:
188 Moby Thesaurus words for "derivation": IC analysis, acceptance, accidence, acquisition, admission, admittance, adoption, affiliation, affix, affixation, allomorph, ancestry, apparentation, appropriation, assumption, beginning, birth, blood, bloodline, borrowed plumes, bound morpheme, bowwow theory, branch, breed, by-product, cognate, commencement, common ancestry, comparative linguistics, conception, conclusion, conjugation, consanguinity, consequence, consequent, copying, corollary, cutting, declension, deduction, derivative, deriving, descent, descriptive linguistics, development, dialectology, difference of form, dingdong theory, direct line, distaff side, distillate, doublet, effect, enclitic, eponym, eponymy, etymology, etymon, event, eventuality, eventuation, extraction, family, female line, filiation, folk etymology, formative, foundation, fountain, free form, fruit, genealogy, genesis, getting, glossematics, glossology, glottochronology, glottology, grammar, graphemics, grass roots, harvest, head, historical linguistics, house, illation, imitation, immediate constituent analysis, inception, induction, inference, infix, infixation, inflection, infringement, issue, language study, legacy, lexicology, lexicostatistics, line, line of descent, lineage, linguistic geography, linguistic science, linguistics, logical outcome, male line, mathematical linguistics, mocking, morph, morpheme, morphemic analysis, morphemics, morphology, morphophonemics, offshoot, offspring, origin, original, origination, outcome, outgrowth, paleography, paradigm, pasticcio, pastiche, philology, phonetics, phonology, phylum, pirating, plagiarism, plagiary, precipitate, prefix, prefixation, primitive, proclitic, product, provenance, provenience, psycholinguistics, race, radical, radix, receipt, receival, receiving, reception, result, resultant, rise, root, seed, semantic history, semantics, sept, sequel, sequela, sequence, sequent, side, simulation, sociolinguistics, source, spear side, spindle side, stem, stirps, stock, strain, structuralism, succession, suffix, suffixation, sword side, syntactics, taking, taproot, theme, transformational linguistics, upshot, well, wellspring, whence, word history, word-formation
Define.com is a registered nonprofit corporation dedicated solely to the global public interest and the advancement of humanity. It belongs to all of us who have a desire to promote electronic democracy, science, creativity, imagination, reason, critical thinking, peace, race and gender equality, civil rights, equal access to education, personal liberty, free speech, animal rights, compassionate and nonviolent parenting, social and economic justice, global monetary reform, Secular Humanism, cognitive liberty and a permanent cessation of The War on Drugs.
Let's see what we can do if we put our heads together.
0