different between information vs theory

English

Etymology

From Middle English informacion, enformacion, borrowed from Anglo-Norman informacioun, enformation, Old French information, from Latin ?nf?rm?ti? (“formation, conception; education”), from the participle stem of ?nform?re (“to inform”). Compare West Frisian ynformaasje (“information”), Dutch informatie (“information”), German Information (“information”), Danish information (“information”), Swedish information (“information”), Norwegian informasjon (“information”).Morphologically inform +? -ation

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /??nf??me???n/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /??nf??me???n/
• Rhymes: -e???n

Noun

information (usually uncountable, plural informations)

1. That which resolves uncertainty; anything that answers the question of "what a given entity is".
2. Things that are or can be known about a given topic; communicable knowledge of something. [from 14th c.]

3. The act of informing or imparting knowledge; notification. [from 14th c.]

4. (law) A statement of criminal activity brought before a judge or magistrate; in the UK, used to inform a magistrate of an offence and request a warrant; in the US, an accusation brought before a judge without a grand jury indictment. [from 15th c.]
   • 1968, Carl B. Cone, The English Jacobins, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, p. 131:

     On May 21, 1792, the Attorney General filed an information against Paine charging him with seditious libel.

5. (obsolete) The act of informing against someone, passing on incriminating knowledge; accusation. [14th-17th c.]
6. (now rare) The systematic imparting of knowledge; education, training. [from 14th c.]
7. (now rare) The creation of form; the imparting of a given quality or characteristic; forming, animation. [from 17th c.]
8. (computing) […] the meaning that a human assigns to data by means of the known conventions used in its representation.
9. (Christianity) Divine inspiration. [from 15th c.]
10. A service provided by telephone which provides listed telephone numbers of a subscriber. [from 20th c.]
12. (information theory) Any unambiguous abstract data, the smallest possible unit being the bit. [from 20th c.]
13. As contrasted with data, information is processed to extract relevant data. [from late 20th c.]
14. (information technology) Any ordered sequence of symbols (or signals) (that could contain a message). [from late 20th c.]

Usage notes

• The definition of information in the computing context is from an international standard vocabulary which, though formally accepted, is largely ignored by the computing profession.[1]

Hyponyms

Derived terms

Pages starting with “information”.

Related terms

Translations

Further reading

• information on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

References

• information at OneLook Dictionary Search
• information in Keywords for Today: A 21st Century Vocabulary, edited by The Keywords Project, Colin MacCabe, Holly Yanacek, 2018.
• information in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

Danish

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin informati?, informati?nis.

Noun

information c (singular definite informationen, plural indefinite informationer)

1. (a piece of) information.

Inflection

Derived terms

• kontaktinformation

French

Etymology

From Old French, borrowed from Latin informati?, informati?nem.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /??.f??.ma.sj??/

Noun

information f (plural informations)

1. (countable) piece of information; datum

   Cette information nous est parvenue hier soir.

2. (plural only) news

   Tous les jours, il regarde la télé le midi pour suivre les informations.

3. (uncountable) information

   Théorie de l'information.

Synonyms

• (piece of information): donnée, nouvelle
• (news): nouvelles
• (information): renseignement

Derived terms

• autoroute de l'information
• lettre d’information
• relevé d'informations
• société de l’information

Related terms

• informateur, infomatrice
• informaticien
• informatif
• informationnel
• informatique
• informatiser
• informer

Further reading

• “information” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Swedish

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin informati?, informati?nis.

Pronunciation

Noun

information c

1. information

Declension

Related terms

• info
• informant
• informationsavdelning
• informatör
• informera
• turistinformation

English

Etymology

From Middle French théorie, from Late Latin the?ria, from Ancient Greek ?????? (the?ría, “contemplation, speculation, a looking at, things looked at”), from ?????? (the?ré?, “I look at, view, consider, examine”), from ?????? (the?rós, “spectator”), from ??? (théa, “view”) + ???? (horá?, “I see, look”) [i. e. ???? ???? (théan horá?, “see, look at a view; survey + genitive”)].

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation, General Australian) IPA^(key): /?????i/, /??i???i/, /????i/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /??i???i/, /????i/

• Rhymes: -??ri

Noun

theory (countable and uncountable, plural theories)

1. A description of an event or system that is considered to be accurate.
2. (obsolete) Mental conception; reflection, consideration. [16th-18th c.]
   • 1646, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, VII.19:

     As they encrease the hatred of vice in some, so doe they enlarge the theory of wickednesse in all.

3. (sciences) A coherent statement or set of ideas that explains observed facts or phenomena and correctly predicts new facts or phenomena not previously observed, or which sets out the laws and principles of something known or observed; a hypothesis confirmed by observation, experiment etc. [from 17th c.]
   • 1843, John Stuart Mill, ""A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, ..., Bk V, Ch 7:

     In its most proper acceptation, theory means the completed result of philosophical induction from experience.

   • 2002, Duncan Steel, The Guardian, 23 May 2002:

     It was only when Einstein's theory of relativity was published in 1915 that physicists could show that Mercury's "anomaly" was actually because Newton's gravitational theory was incomplete.

   • 2003, Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything, BCA, p. 118:

     The world would need additional decades [...] before the Big Bang would begin to move from interesting idea to established theory.

   • 2009, Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show On Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, Bantam, p. 10:

     Scientists and creationists are understanding the word "theory" in two very different senses. Evolution is a theory in the same sense as the heliocentric theory. In neither case should the word "only" be used, as in "only a theory".
4. (uncountable) The underlying principles or methods of a given technical skill, art etc., as opposed to its practice. [from 17th c.]
5. (mathematics) A field of study attempting to exhaustively describe a particular class of constructs. [from 18th c.]

   Knot theory classifies the mappings of a circle into 3-space.

6. A hypothesis or conjecture. [from 18th c.]
   • 2003, Sean Coughlan, The Guardian, 21 Jun 2003:

     The theory is that by stripping costs to the bone, they are able to offer ludicrously low fares.

7. (countable, logic) A set of axioms together with all statements derivable from them; or, a set of statements which are deductively closed. Equivalently, a formal language plus a set of axioms (from which can then be derived theorems). The statements may be required to all be bound (i.e., to have no free variables).

   A theory is consistent if it has a model.

Usage notes

In scientific discourse, the sense “unproven conjecture” is discouraged (with hypothesis or conjecture preferred), due to unintentional ambiguity and intentional equivocation with the sense “well-developed statement or structure”.

Synonyms

• See also Thesaurus:supposition

Hyponyms

Meronyms

• (in logic): axioms

Holonyms

• (in logic): formal system

Related terms

Translations

See also

• axiom
• postulate
• proposition

References

• theory at OneLook Dictionary Search
• theory in Keywords for Today: A 21st Century Vocabulary, edited by The Keywords Project, Colin MacCabe, Holly Yanacek, 2018.
• "theory" in Raymond Williams, Keywords (revised), 1983, Fontana Press, page 316.
• theory in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

Anagrams

• Yother, thyreo-