||A` pri*o"ri (?). [L. a (ab) + prior
former.] 1. (Logic) Characterizing that kind of
reasoning which deduces consequences from definitions formed, or principles
assumed, or which infers effects from causes previously known; deductive or
deductively. The reverse of a posteriori.
3. (Philos.) Applied to knowledge and
conceptions assumed, or presupposed, as prior to experience, in order to
make experience rational or possible.
A priori, that is, form these necessities of the mind
or forms of thinking, which, though first revealed to us by experience,
must yet have preëxisted in order to make experience possible.
Coleridge.