See great chain of being in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "great chains of being",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "great chains of being"
},
"expansion": "great chain of being (plural great chains of being)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
"Entries with incorrect language header",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with 1 entry",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with entries",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "topical",
"langcode": "en",
"name": "Christianity",
"orig": "en:Christianity",
"parents": [
"Abrahamism",
"Religion",
"Culture",
"Society",
"All topics",
"Fundamental"
],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "topical",
"langcode": "en",
"name": "Obsolete scientific theories",
"orig": "en:Obsolete scientific theories",
"parents": [
"History of science",
"History",
"Sciences",
"All topics",
"Fundamental"
],
"source": "w"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1733, [Alexander Pope], An Essay on Man. […], epistle I, London: Printed for J[ohn] Wilford, […], →OCLC, page 235:",
"text": "Vaſt Chain of Being! which from God began, / Ethereal Eſſence, Spirit, Subſtance, Man, / Beaſt, Bird, Fiſh, Inſect! what no Eye can ſee, / No Glaſs can reach! from Infinite to Thee!",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1852 January – 1853 April, Charles Kingsley, Jun., chapter XXV, in Hypatia: Or, New Foes with an Old Face. […], volume II, London: John W[illiam] Parker and Son, […], published 1853, →OCLC, page 256:",
"text": "If the one spirit permeated all things, if its all-energising presence linked the flower with the crystal as well as with the demon and the god, must it not link together also the two extremes of the great chain of being?",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1903 [1820], Daniel Webster, “First Settlement of New England”, in A. J. George, editor, Select Speeches of Daniel Webster 1817–1845:",
"text": "[…]; ourselves being but links in the great chain of being, which begins with the origin of our race, runs onward through its successive generations, binding together the past, the present, and the future, and terminating at last, with the consummation of all things earthly, at the throne of God.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1936, A. O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea, Harvard University Press, page 205:",
"text": "There was more than one way, however, in which the principles embodied in the cosmological conception of the Chain of Being could be used as weapons against social discontent and especially against all equalitarian movements.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1996, David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous, →ISBN:",
"text": "In Descartes’s hands, two thousand years later, this hierarchical continuum of living forms, commonly called “the Great Chain of Being,” was polarized into a thorough dichotomy between mechanical, unthinking matter (including all minerals, plants, and animals, as well as the human body) and pure, thinking mind (the exclusive province of humans and God).",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2012, Lydia Pyne, Stephen J. Pyne, chapter 5, in The Last Lost World, Penguin, →ISBN:",
"text": "Far from being a radical innovation without precedent, Darwinian evolution had itself evolved by fits and starts out of one of the hoariest concepts in Western civilization, the Great Chain of Being.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A hierarchical structure of all matter and life, descending from God through angels, humans, animals and plants to minerals, and thought in medieval times to have been decreed by God."
],
"id": "en-great_chain_of_being-en-noun-OGYJAiJF",
"links": [
[
"Christianity",
"Christianity"
],
[
"hierarchical",
"hierarchical"
],
[
"structure",
"structure"
],
[
"matter",
"matter"
],
[
"life",
"life"
],
[
"God",
"God"
],
[
"angel",
"angel"
],
[
"human",
"human"
],
[
"animal",
"animal"
],
[
"plant",
"plant"
],
[
"mineral",
"mineral"
],
[
"medieval",
"medieval"
],
[
"decree",
"decree"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(Christianity, historical) A hierarchical structure of all matter and life, descending from God through angels, humans, animals and plants to minerals, and thought in medieval times to have been decreed by God."
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "Chain of Being"
},
{
"word": "Great Chain of Being"
}
],
"tags": [
"historical"
],
"topics": [
"Christianity"
]
}
],
"word": "great chain of being"
}
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "great chains of being",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "great chains of being"
},
"expansion": "great chain of being (plural great chains of being)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English countable nouns",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English nouns",
"English terms with historical senses",
"English terms with quotations",
"Pages with 1 entry",
"Pages with entries",
"en:Christianity",
"en:Obsolete scientific theories"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1733, [Alexander Pope], An Essay on Man. […], epistle I, London: Printed for J[ohn] Wilford, […], →OCLC, page 235:",
"text": "Vaſt Chain of Being! which from God began, / Ethereal Eſſence, Spirit, Subſtance, Man, / Beaſt, Bird, Fiſh, Inſect! what no Eye can ſee, / No Glaſs can reach! from Infinite to Thee!",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1852 January – 1853 April, Charles Kingsley, Jun., chapter XXV, in Hypatia: Or, New Foes with an Old Face. […], volume II, London: John W[illiam] Parker and Son, […], published 1853, →OCLC, page 256:",
"text": "If the one spirit permeated all things, if its all-energising presence linked the flower with the crystal as well as with the demon and the god, must it not link together also the two extremes of the great chain of being?",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1903 [1820], Daniel Webster, “First Settlement of New England”, in A. J. George, editor, Select Speeches of Daniel Webster 1817–1845:",
"text": "[…]; ourselves being but links in the great chain of being, which begins with the origin of our race, runs onward through its successive generations, binding together the past, the present, and the future, and terminating at last, with the consummation of all things earthly, at the throne of God.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1936, A. O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea, Harvard University Press, page 205:",
"text": "There was more than one way, however, in which the principles embodied in the cosmological conception of the Chain of Being could be used as weapons against social discontent and especially against all equalitarian movements.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1996, David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous, →ISBN:",
"text": "In Descartes’s hands, two thousand years later, this hierarchical continuum of living forms, commonly called “the Great Chain of Being,” was polarized into a thorough dichotomy between mechanical, unthinking matter (including all minerals, plants, and animals, as well as the human body) and pure, thinking mind (the exclusive province of humans and God).",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2012, Lydia Pyne, Stephen J. Pyne, chapter 5, in The Last Lost World, Penguin, →ISBN:",
"text": "Far from being a radical innovation without precedent, Darwinian evolution had itself evolved by fits and starts out of one of the hoariest concepts in Western civilization, the Great Chain of Being.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A hierarchical structure of all matter and life, descending from God through angels, humans, animals and plants to minerals, and thought in medieval times to have been decreed by God."
],
"links": [
[
"Christianity",
"Christianity"
],
[
"hierarchical",
"hierarchical"
],
[
"structure",
"structure"
],
[
"matter",
"matter"
],
[
"life",
"life"
],
[
"God",
"God"
],
[
"angel",
"angel"
],
[
"human",
"human"
],
[
"animal",
"animal"
],
[
"plant",
"plant"
],
[
"mineral",
"mineral"
],
[
"medieval",
"medieval"
],
[
"decree",
"decree"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(Christianity, historical) A hierarchical structure of all matter and life, descending from God through angels, humans, animals and plants to minerals, and thought in medieval times to have been decreed by God."
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "Chain of Being"
}
],
"tags": [
"historical"
],
"topics": [
"Christianity"
]
}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "Great Chain of Being"
}
],
"word": "great chain of being"
}
Download raw JSONL data for great chain of being meaning in English (3.9kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-12-08 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-12-04 using wiktextract (bb46d54 and 0c3c9f6). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.