different between principle vs faith

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Old French principe, from Latin pr?ncipium (“beginning, foundation”), from pr?nceps (“first”); see prince.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?p??ns?p?l/, /?p??ns?p?l/
• Hyphenation: prin?ci?ple
• Homophone: principal

Noun

principle (plural principles)

1. A fundamental assumption or guiding belief.

   • Let us consider ‘my dog is asleep on the floor’ again. Frege thinks that this sentence can be analyzed in various different ways. Instead of treating it as expressing the application of __ is asleep on the floor to my dog, we can think of it as expressing the application of the concept
          my dog is asleep on __
     to the object
          the floor
     (see Frege 1919). Frege recognizes what is now a commonplace in the logical analysis of natural language. We can attribute more than one logical form to a single sentence. Let us call this the principle of multiple analyses. Frege does not claim that the principle always holds, but as we shall see, modern type theory does claim this.

2. A rule used to choose among solutions to a problem.

3. (sometimes pluralized) Moral rule or aspect.

   I don't doubt your principles.

   You are clearly a person of principle.

   It's the principle of the thing; I won't do business with someone I can't trust.

4. (physics) A rule or law of nature, or the basic idea on how the laws of nature are applied.

   Bernoulli's Principle

   The Pauli Exclusion Principle prevents two fermions from occupying the same state.

   The principle of the internal combustion engine

5. A fundamental essence, particularly one producing a given quality.
   • 1845, William Gregory, Outlines of Chemistry

     Cathartine is the bitter, purgative principle of senna.

6. (obsolete) A beginning.
7. A source, or origin; that from which anything proceeds; fundamental substance or energy; primordial substance; ultimate element, or cause.
   • 1663, John Tillotson, The Wisdom of Being Religious

     The soul of man is an active principle.

8. An original faculty or endowment.
   • 1828, Dugal Stewart, The Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers of Man

     those active principles whose direct and ultimate object is the communication either of enjoyment or suffering

Usage notes

• Principle ("moral rule"), as a noun, is often confused with principal, which can be an adjective ("most important") or a noun ("school principal"). A memory aid to avoid this confusion is: "The principal alphabetic principle places A before E".

Synonyms

• (moral rule or aspect): tenet

Derived terms

Related terms

• prince
• principal
• principality

Translations

Verb

principle (third-person singular simple present principles, present participle principling, simple past and past participle principled)

1. (transitive) To equip with principles; to establish, or fix, in certain principles; to impress with any tenet or rule of conduct.

   • Let an enthusiast be principled that he or his teacher is inspired.

Further reading

• principle in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• principle in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

English

Alternative forms

• feith, feithe, fayth, faythe, faithe (all obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle English faith, fayth, feith, feyth (also fay, fey, fei ("faith"); > English fay (“faith”)), borrowed from Old French fay, fey, fei, feit, feid (“faith”), from Latin fid?s (faith, belief, trust; whence also English fidelity), from f?d? (“trust, confide in”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *b?id?-, zero-grade of *b?eyd?- ("to command, persuade, trust"; whence also English bide).Displaced native Old English geleafa (“faith, religion”), which was a cognate of Dutch geloof (“permission”), which is survived in English leave (“permission”).

Old French had [?] as a final devoiced allophone of /ð/ from lenited Latin /d/; this eventually fell silent in the 12th century. The -th of the Middle English forms is most straightforwardly accounted for as a direct borrowing of a French [?]. However, it has also been seen as arising from alteration of a French form with -d under influence of English abstract nouns in the suffix -th (e.g. truth, ruth, health, etc.), or as a recharacterisation of a French form like fay, fey, fei with the same suffix, thus making the word equivalent to fay +? -th.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /fe??/
• Rhymes: -e??

Noun

faith (countable and uncountable, plural faiths)

1. A trust or confidence in the intentions or abilities of a person, object, or ideal from prior empirical evidence.
2. The process of forming or understanding abstractions, ideas, or beliefs, without empirical evidence, experience, or observation.

3. A religious or spiritual belief system.

   • For we are a nation of believers. Underneath the clamor of building and the rush of our day's pursuits, we are believers in justice and liberty and union, and in our own Union. We believe that every man must someday be free. And we believe in ourselves.
     That is the mistake that our enemies have always made. In my lifetime--in depression and in war--they have awaited our defeat. Each time, from the secret places of the American heart, came forth the faith they could not see or that they could not even imagine. It brought us victory. And it will again.
4. An obligation of loyalty or fidelity and the observance of such an obligation.

5. (obsolete) Credibility or truth.
   • 1784-1810, William Mitford, History of Greece

     the faith of the foregoing […] narrative

Quotations

For quotations using this term, see Citations:faith.

Synonyms

• (knowing, without direct observation, based on indirect evidence and experience, that something is true, real, or will happen): belief, confidence, trust, conviction
• (system of religious belief): religion

Derived terms

Related terms

Translations

References

• faith at OneLook Dictionary Search
• faith in Keywords for Today: A 21st Century Vocabulary, edited by The Keywords Project, Colin MacCabe, Holly Yanacek, 2018.
• faith in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• faith in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

Anagrams

• hatif