(click/touch triangles for details)
Definition
relating to metaphysics (the philosophical study of being and knowing)or:
relating to beliefs not proven with the scientific method
or:
without material form or substance
or:
highly abstract and overly theoretical
More rarely, metaphysical can reference a 17th-century style of British poetry.
- RUH-SPIRIT: in Fremen belief, that part of the individual which is always rooted in (and capable of sensing) the metaphysical world.Frank Herbert -- Dune
- What metaphysical rapture could equal it for its substance, its frailty, and its beauty?Mark Helprin -- A Soldier of the Great War
- It is at once imaginative and metaphysical,—in short, Greek.Herman Melville -- Billy Budd
- My old friend Ork sat shaking his head in dismay, saying nothing, brooding, no doubt, on the dark metaphysical implications.John Gardner -- Grendel
- The testimony of his contemporaries proclaims—and his life fully confirms—his metaphysical and mystical interests.Jorge Luis Borges -- The Garden of Forking Paths
- I'm not sure if the question's rhetorical or if she thinks I have a clue to her metaphysical mystery.Gayle Forman -- Where She Went
- I am unversed in the metaphysical, have long become estranged from it, and if this can be so, I believe the metaphysical is as much unversed in me.Chang-rae Lee -- A Gesture Life
- I am driving and going seventy-two and praying not to get a ticket and playing Metaphysical I Spy.John Green -- Paper Towns
- But is this interpreter necessarily metaphysical and unembodied?Susanna Kaysen -- Girl Interrupted
- Not the metaphysical...the ones with the god stones and the sacrifices and all the rest of it!Terry Pratchett -- Nation
- This is extremely abstract and metaphysical, Juan.George Bernard Shaw -- Man And Superman
- This was very metaphysical; not more so, however, than several observations Madame Merle had already made.Henry James -- The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1
- The key to the modern systems of psychological interpretation therefore is this: the metaphysical realm = the unconscious.Joseph Campbell -- The Hero With a Thousand Faces
- Herr Naphta removed guilt and merit from the empirical world to the metaphysical.Thomas Mann -- The Magic Mountain
- He has to metaphysically transport a large mass over a vast distance in a tiny period of time.Henry H. Neff -- The Maelstrom
- Her father liked the metaphysical streak which had unconsciously got into it, so that was allowed to remain though she had her doubts about it.Louisa May Alcott -- Little Women
- You mean you don't have the comfort of an excuse, a metaphysical excuse.Robert Ludlum -- The Bourne Ultimatum
- He said he wanted to 'dismiss all this meaningless nonsense which long has dominated metaphysical thought and brought it into disrepute.'Jostein Gaarder -- Sophie's World
- He was a metaphysical puzzle to me.Henry David Thoreau -- Walden
- Hunting was equally a devotion, full of metaphysical concepts veiled from Carol.Sinclair Lewis -- Main Street