Definition of "determinate" [de•ter•mi•nate]

• Precisely limited or defined; definite: a determinate number; a determinate distance. (adjective)
• Conclusively settled; final. (adjective)
• Firm in purpose; resolute. (adjective)
• Botany Terminating in a flower and blooming in a sequence beginning with the uppermost or central flower; cymose: a determinate inflorescence. (adjective)
• Botany Not continuing indefinitely at the tip of an axis: determinate growth. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The Cambridge logician W.E. Johnson introduced the terms determinate and determinable to apply to examples such as red and colored."
• "The sovereign he defined as a determinate human superior who receives habitual obedience from the bulk of a given society and is not himself in the habit of obedience to any superior."
• "Between the child and the living creatures which he cultivates there is born a mysterious correspondence which induces the child to fulfil certain determinate acts without the intervention of the teacher, that is, leads him to an auto-education."