Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A person who is expert in or given to casuistry.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To play the part of a casuist.
- noun One versed in or using casuistry; one who studies and resolves cases of conscience, or nice points regarding conduct.
- noun Hence An over-subtle reasoner; a sophist.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun One who is skilled in, or given to, casuistry.
- intransitive verb To play the casuist.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun ethics A person who resolves cases of conscience or moral duty.
- noun Someone who attempts to specify
exact andprecise rules for the direction of every circumstance ofbehavior
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun someone whose reasoning is subtle and often specious
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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If the ascetic moralist was a quasi - mathematician, the casuist was a kind of medical man.
CASUISTRY WERNER STARK 1968
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"But tell me, Tribune, you who are a notable casuist, which is the best for a state -- that its governor should be over-thrifty or over-lavish?"
Rienzi, Last of the Roman Tribunes Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton 1838
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Ugh. Singly it's not the worst of qualities a lawyerly type and casuist might bring to bear, but given the use it's put to it's positively insufferable.
On Thursday, the Legg report will be published along with... 2009
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Most valuably, Mr. Colucci shows Justice Kennedy's judicial philosophy to be a deeply rooted one and not, as one might suspect, the result of varied decisions that require a casuist or law professor to make coherent.
The Decider 2009
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The casuist may therefore cherry pick his route to his destination.
On Thursday, the Legg report will be published along with... 2009
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Tolstoy was often a rather wild thinker, a village explainer, an obtuse casuist; he filled his artistic works with his own woolly-minded theorizing.
Jim Windolf: A Q&A with Tolstoy and Dostoevsky Translator Richard Pevear: Jim Windolf Windolf, Jim 2008
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That always was obvious enough but post-9/11 realities have made it stark, such that only the obdurately self-blinded and the gifted casuist can deny it.
The Volokh Conspiracy » A Bit of Perspective on the Use of Feces and Toilets in Protests: 2007
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“Prescribe the form of words we must lay hold of to achieve the object, and we will set to work, arch-casuist.”
Symposium 2007
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To be sure, Miss Rawlins learnedly said, playing with her fan, a casuist would give it, that the matrimonial vow ought to supercede any other obligation.
Clarissa Harlowe 2006
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Thou art, surely, casuist good enough to know, (what I have insisted upon* heretofore,) that the sin of seducing a credulous and easy girl, is as great as that of bringing to your lure an incredulous and watchful one.
Clarissa Harlowe 2006
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