Definition:
Facts, documentation, or testimony used to strengthen a claim, support an argument, or reach a conclusion. See also:
Etymology:
From the Latin, "obvious"Examples and Observations:
- "The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd."
(Bertrand Russell) - "'Reason' is the cause of our falsification of the evidence of the senses. In so far as the senses show becoming, passing away, change, they do not lie."
(Friedrich Nietzsche) - "America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."
(President George W. Bush) - "We have it. The smoking gun. The evidence. The potential weapon of mass destruction we have been looking for as our pretext of invading Iraq. There's just one problem: it's in North Korea."
(Jon Stewart, The Daily Show) - "The more far-reaching effect of introducing evidence [in a trial] is to pave the way for other parties to introduce evidence, question witnesses, and offer argument on the subject in attempts to rebut or confine the initial evidence. In the customary phrase, the party who offers evidence on a point is said to have 'opened the door,' meaning that the other side may now make countermoves to answer or rebut the initial evidence, 'fighting fire with fire.'"
(Christopher B. Mueller and Laird C. Kirkpatrick, Evidence: Practice Under the Rules. Aspen Publishers, 1999) - "Modern man's capacity for destruction is quixotic evidence of humanity's capacity for reconstruction. The powerful technological agents we have unleashed against the environment include many of the agents we require for its reconstruction."
(George F. Will)
Pronunciation: EV-i-dens
