Dictionary

construance en · NOUN

Etymology

From construe + -ance.

Meanings

1. (countable, uncountable) Synonym of construal.
   • The construance has been, it is complained by the president’s critics, that the innocent have been made to suffer while the guilty ones—the actual murderers—have escaped with a penalty that is a travesty. 1906 December 29, “In Brownsville Case: President’s Opponents to Spare Him No End of Embarrassment”, in The Waxahachie Daily Light, volume XIV, Waxahachie, Tex.:
   • The purpose of science is to generate intersubjectively valid and pragmatically useful construances of reality … over the generations, constraints on the method of inquiry have evolved, mainly to counteract the basic human tendencies to interpret events within one’s preconceptions and to act such as to create what one expects. 1995, Canadian Journal of Counselling, page 323:
   • The counselor’s agreement with the client’s construances of events communicates a positive attitude toward the client. 1982, Stanley R. Strong, Susan R. Strong, Charles D. Claiborn, Change Through Interaction: Social Psychological Processes of Counseling and Psychotherapy (Wiley Series on Personality Processes, →ISSN), Wiley-Interscience, →ISBN, pages 133–134:
   • Picking at the fine construances of words—half of which come to us through translations of dubious accuracy—would be no ally to our need for alacrity. 2012, Eric Flint, Charles E. Gannon, 1635: The Papal Stakes, Baen Books:
   • That is the language of the organic act, and if the Journal insists on a strict construance of the paragraph it will mean that the territorial legislature has power over supreme courts as well as the inferior courts referred to, and if the legislature has power to create county courts it has the power and it is its duty to create a supreme court. 1886 March 17, “County Courts”, in Arizona Daily Star, volume XI, number 66, Tucson, Ariz.:
   • The Mǎ reading of 12:1, like the grammatically normal (if interpretatively problematic) “and” reading of 9:1, is the likely solution, whereas the later suggestions are ingenuities based on technically possible but contextually awkward construances of one word. 2002, E. Bruce Brooks, A. Taeko Brooks, “Word Philology and Text Philology in Analects 9:1”, in Bryan W. Van Norden, editor, Confucius and the Analects: New Essays, Oxford University Press, part II (Appreciating the New), page 197:

Forms

Relateds

misconstruance

Synonyms

construal