reasoning by elimination
- noun
:
razonamiento por eliminación
- The detective used reasoning by elimination to narrow down the list of suspects.
Examples
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Physicians often rely on reasoning by elimination to diagnose rare diseases.
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Through reasoning by elimination, she identified the only solution that fit all the conditions.
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The detective used reasoning by elimination to solve the case.
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Have you considered reasoning by elimination in your analysis?
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Physicians often rely on reasoning by elimination to diagnose rare diseases.
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The detective used reasoning by elimination to narrow down the list of suspects.
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Through reasoning by elimination, she identified the only solution that fit all the conditions.
Synonyms
9
3.7
The process of removing wrong options to find the right answer
Surface Forms
Morphology
reasoning + by + elimination
The meaning is directly compositional: 'reasoning' (thinking logically) combined with 'by' (indicating method) and 'elimination' (rejecting possibilities) yields a method of reasoning that rules out options. This is a common, cross-linguistic construction (e.g. 'razonamiento por eliminación', 'raisonnement par élimination'), so a B1 learner who knows the constituents would readily infer the meaning.
Etymology
Reasoning by elimination paints a clear picture: you make a list of possible answers and cross out the wrong ones. By reasoning you think through the choices and by elimination you 'rule out' the bad ones, so the phrase means finding the right answer by removing what cannot be true.