TABULA • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Tabula

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noun

Tabula n. (pl. tabulae)

A table; a tablet.

(Zool.) One of the transverse plants found in the calicles of certain corals and hydroids.

Tabula rasa, a smoothed tablet; hence, figuratively, the mind in its earliest state, before receiving impressions from without; a term used by Hobbes, Locke, and others, in maintaining a theory opposed to the doctrine of innate ideas.

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Etymology of 'Tabula'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Tabula" Quotes from Famous Books

... aggressiveness of the latter party, to think that it must be weak. I have already been seized upon (a gentleman would write "button- holed") by several persons, who, in their anxiety to be first in imprinting their own views on the tabula rasa of a stranger's mind, have exercised an unseemly overhaste in giving the conversation an anti-missionary twist. They apparently desire to convey the impression that the New England teachers, finding a people rejoicing in the innocence and simplicity of Eden, taught them the knowledge of evil, ...

— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... ideas has obscured rather than enlightened mental science. It is hard to say how many fallacies have arisen from the representation of the mind as a box, as a 'tabula rasa,' a book, a mirror, and the like. It is remarkable how Plato in the Theaetetus, after having indulged in the figure of the waxen tablet and the decoy, afterwards discards them. The mind is also represented by another class of images, as the spring ...

— Theaetetus • Plato

... our administrative wants are always in advance of our means of satisfying them, and we use vigorously those means as soon as they are supplied. Our method of supplying the means, too, is peculiar. Instead of making a tabula rasa, and beginning from the foundations, we utilise to the utmost what we happen to possess, and add merely what is absolutely indispensable. Metaphorically speaking, we repair and extend our political edifice according to the changing necessities of our mode of life, without ...

— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... Mahometes Othomannus qui Graeciae imperium subvertit, cum oratorum postulata audiret externarum gentium, cochlearia lignea assidue caelabat, aut aliquid in tabula affingebat. ...

— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... ut tibi totum Morum velut in tabula depingam, utinam tam absolute praestare 20 queam quam tu vehementer cupis; nam mihi quoque non iniucundum fuerit interim in amici multo omnium suavissimi contemplatione versari. Sed primum non cuiusvis est ...

— Selections from Erasmus - Principally from his Epistles • Erasmus Roterodamus