rationally

adv

rationally

adv

Etymology From rational + -ly.

1

In a rational manner

  • Concerning the lenity of God, upon which you have most rationally dilated, the 10th chapt. of the 1 booke of Proclus would extreamely delight you.1827, Epistolary Correspondence: 4, page 43:
  • […] inasmuch as nothing was really and rationally to be hoped for but a long continuance of the siege and wearying out of the English, they were naturally a little afraid of Joan's impetuous notions. He said— “You see, we are sure that the waiting game is the best, whereas you would carry everything by storm.”1895 November, Louis de Conte, translated by [Jean François Alden] [pseudonyms; Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain)], “Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc. […]”, in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, volume XCI, number DXLVI, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →ISSN, [book I], part II, chapter 20, page 880:
2 more examples
  • Although computers are a twentieth-century invention, computationism is much older, descending from Newton's contemporary Leibniz (and, arguably, more remotely from the Pythagoreans). It holds that everything is rationally intelligible only so far as it instantiates mathematical rules and ratios. As understood by Leibniz and his followers, computationism was explicitly hostile to all versions of materialism.2003, The Cambridge Companion to Darwin, page 13:
  • The conflict is rationally resolvable either by correcting the mistaken belief or by bringing the wayward desire under rational control.2006, Daniel McInerny, The Difficult Good, page 134:
Antonyms
irrationally
Derived terms
biorationally

Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — list of authors.