# thesis

Pronunciation: say "THEE-sis" US /ˈθisɪs/, UK /ˈθiːsɪs/

## Noun

1. A long essay written to establish the validity of a claim, especially one submitted to fulfill the requirements for an academic degree; a dissertation.
   - Simple: A long piece of writing about one subject, written to finish a college or graduate degree.
   - _Her doctoral thesis examined migration patterns across three continents._
   - _He defended his thesis before a committee of five professors._
2. A statement, theory, or proposition that someone puts forward as true and supports with arguments or evidence.
   - Simple: An idea or claim that someone says is true and tries to prove with reasons or evidence.
   - _Her thesis that early humans cooked their food reshaped the debate._
   - _Critics attacked the central thesis of the book point by point._
3. In dialectical reasoning, the first stage: a position stated and then opposed by its antithesis, the conflict being resolved in a synthesis. The triad is popularly credited to Hegel, though it comes mainly from Fichte.
   - Simple: The first stage of a reasoning method where an idea is stated, then challenged by its opposite.
   - _In the classic dialectical triad, a thesis is challenged by its antithesis before both are reconciled._
   - _The lecture traced how a thesis develops into synthesis through contradiction._

## Other meanings

- (noun) A conjecture too imprecise to be formally stated or verified, yet useful as a working assumption.
- (noun) The downward motion of the hand or foot used to mark rhythm, and so the accented, stressed beat of a measure of music or verse; an ictus.
- (noun) The lowering of the voice on a syllable, and so the unstressed part of a metrical foot or an unaccented musical note.

## Origin

The root is Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁- ("to place, put, do"), which gave the Ancient Greek verb títhēmi ("to place, put, set") and from it thésis ("arrangement, placement, position, or lowering of the voice"). English got the word through Late Middle English and Latin thesis. It is a doublet of deed. The German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte first used it for the opening stage of reasoning, and it was later applied to Hegel's dialectical method.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/thesis (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).