English

Verb

prescind ‎(third-person singular simple present prescinds, present participle prescinding, simple past and past participle prescinded)

1. (intransitive, with from) To abstract (from); to dismiss from consideration.
   • 1998 Fall, Alan Ryan, “In a Conversational Idiom.”, in Social Research, volume 65, number 3, page 473-489:

     In making real-world contracts with someone else, for whatever purpose, we expressly prescind from the other party's personal, private motivation. I may agree to mow your lawn for ten dollars because I like mowing lawns, because it is the only skill I possess, because it is the only skill that anyone else is willing to purchase from me, and so endlessly on. But all you can demand from me is a mown lawn

2. (transitive) To pay exclusive attention to.
   • c. 1838, Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet, Henry Longueville Mansel, John Veitch, editor, Lectures on Logic, published 1860:

     The result of Attention, by concentrating the mind upon certain qualities, is thus to withdraw or abstract it from all else. In technical language, we are said to prescind the phenomena which we exclusively consider. To prescind, to attend, and to abstract, are merely different but correlative names for the same process; and the first two are nearly convertible. When we are said to prescind a quality, we are merely supposed to attend to that quality exclusively.

Related terms

• prescission