Observation

1. (n.) The act or the faculty of observing or taking notice; the act of seeing, or of fixing the mind upon, anything.

2. (n.) The result of an act, or of acts, of observing; view; reflection; conclusion; judgment.

3. (n.) Hence: An expression of an opinion or judgment upon what one has observed; a remark.

4. (n.) Performance of what is prescribed; adherence in practice; observance.

5. (n.) The act of recognizing and noting some fact or occurrence in nature, as an aurora, a corona, or the structure of an animal.

6. (n.) Specifically, the act of measuring, with suitable instruments, some magnitude, as the time of an occultation, with a clock; the right ascension of a star, with a transit instrument and clock; the sun's altitude, or the distance of the moon from a star, with a sextant; the temperature, with a thermometer, etc.

7. (n.) The information so acquired.

Thesaurus Entries

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