denumerate

English

Verb

denumerate (third-person singular simple present denumerates, present participle denumerating, simple past and past participle denumerated)

1. (mathematics) To assign a bijection from a denumerable set to the natural numbers.
   • 1901, Cassius Jackson Keyser, Pamphlets on Mathematics, page 209:

     To such as know that it is impossible to denumerate the points of a continuum, that is, to set up a one-to-one correspondence between, say, the points of a unit-line and the integers, Zermelo's result is apt to be surprising, ...

   • 1948, American Scientist - Volumes 36-37, page 398:

     According to this concept, a straight line, or any continuous dimension generally, contains points, such that between any two different points there exist as many points as we wish to denumerate.

   • 1992, James D. Fix, Leopold Flatto, Advanced calculus, page 18:

     For any fixed positive integer n, use Exercise 2 to denumerate the polynomials Xⁿ + r_n-1X^n-1+. . . +r₀.

2. (more generally) To list; to enumerate.
   • 1974, English Recusant Literature - Volume 205, page 279:

     By the first (which is made at corpus) is commemorated the cold and stiffs extension of the body of Iesus Christ: which according to the saying of the prophet was such, that they might denumerate all his bones.

   • 1981, Bulletin of the Deccan College Research Institute:

     These groupings enable the child to classify the reality, serially order it, denumerate it and so on.

   • 1982, Art-language - Volume 5, page 57:

     We haven't put ourselves in a situation to denumerate or enumerate any exhaustive set of conditions which supervene or intervene or are present in relation to any piece of discourse.

3. To determine the magnitude of; to provide an upper bound on the number or rank of.
   • 1967, United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs. Subcommittee on Water and Power Resources, Progress in Weather Modification:

     Industrial utilization of weather modification is a factor undiminished in its latent potential, a factor the potential economic magnitude of which has, like infinity, ascended above every attempt to denumerate it.

   • 2004, David Blaschke, Mikhal A. Ivanov, Thomas Mannel, Heavy Quark Physics, page 222:

     When setting up a problem involving the spin of particles it is always instructive to first denumerate the complexity of the problem and count the number of independent structures of the problem.

   • 2005, J.T. Dillon, Jesus as a Teacher: A Multidisciplinary Case Study, page 156:

     Here Marquis accurately describes the nature of learning and is one of the few writers to assess extent, to denumerate it, and in so doing to indicate its severe limitation--120 hearers made a positive decision.

   • 2002, Hans Arthur Skott-Myhre, Youth Subculture as Performances of Postcolonial Hybridity:

     This kind of minority is defined not by its numeric number but by its positioning in relation to any dominant group that can denumerate the other.

4. (linguistics) To indicate an unspecified number.
   • 2007, Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology - Volume 61, page 23:

     Alternatively, mass and count nouns may be distinguished according to syntactic criteria. Count nouns may take an indefinite article (a car), may be pluralized (three cars), and take quantifiers that denumerate (many cars), whereas mass nouns cannot take an indefinite article (*a honey), cannot be pluralized (*three honey), and take only quantifiers that denumerate (much honey).

Adjective

denumerate (not comparable)

1. Involving the process of denumerating.
   • 1878, James Joseph Sylvester, James Whitbread Lee Glaisher, Quarterly Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics:

     I have already calculated and discussed the agnates of the denumerate form of ...

2. uncountable.
   • 1916, California Grocers Advocate - Volume 21, Issues 1-26, page 9:

     I might go on indefinitely on denumerate benefits that arise from co-operation, but these I have already mentioned will form a good working platform for years to come.

   • 1967, Ethics: An International Journal of Social, Political and Legal Philosophy:

     Where the divine is not so denumerate or diaphanous and the cosmology is different, we still find the object of science, the world, dependent on a whole hierarchy of supernatural personalities, demons, saints, angels, thrones, dominations, and principalities, all these ultimately dependent on God.

Anagrams

• enumerated