supervene
Học thuậtThân thiện
Definition
- Verb:
- To occur as an additional, intervening, or unexpected event or development, often changing a situation. It implies something happening after a previous event and having a significant effect on it.
Usage
- Verb: Used to describe an event that follows and alters an existing situation, typically in a way that was not the primary focus or was unforeseen.
- The verb is often followed by the preposition "on" or "upon" (e.g., supervene on a situation).
- It is commonly used in formal, academic, or medical contexts to describe complications or new conditions.
Examples
- Verb:
- A period of calm was followed by a financial crisis that supervened and ruined their plans.
- The initial infection was treatable, but pneumonia supervened, making recovery much more difficult.
- We had agreed on the terms, but new legal objections supervened, delaying the contract.
Advanced Usage
- "supervene on/upon": To occur as an intervening development upon an existing state or process.
- A state of panic can supervene upon a sudden loss of communication.
- In philosophy, particularly in discussions of ethics or the philosophy of mind, "supervene" describes how higher-level properties (like mental states) depend on and are determined by more fundamental properties (like physical brain states), without being identical to them.
- Mental properties are said to supervene on physical properties; a change in the mental state implies a change in the underlying physical state.
Variants and Related Words
- Supervenience (noun): The quality or state of supervening; especially in philosophy, the relationship where one set of facts or properties is determined by another set.
- The debate focused on the supervenience of moral facts on natural facts.
- Supervenient (adjective): That which supervenes.
- The supervenient illness complicated the diagnosis.
Synonyms
- Ensue: To happen afterward, often as a consequence.
- Intervene: To occur between events, often altering them.
- Complicate: To make something more complex, often by adding a new factor. (This captures the effect of supervening.)
- Follow: To come after in time or sequence.
Antonyms
- Precede: To come before.
- Cause: To be the primary agent of an event (as supervening events are usually secondary developments).
Related Phrases/Idioms
Verb
- take place as an additional or unexpected development