heuristic

1 of 2

adjective

heu·​ris·​tic hyu̇-ˈri-stik 

: involving or serving as an aid to learning, discovery, or problem-solving by experimental and especially trial-and-error methods

heuristic techniques

a heuristic assumption

It leaves us in a shady universe of tentative hints and heuristic guesses.

—Richard A. Lanham

also : of or relating to exploratory problem-solving techniques that utilize self-educating techniques (such as the evaluation of feedback) to improve performance

a heuristic computer program

Expert systems solve problems by using heuristic or self-educating approaches.

—John O. Green

heuristically

hyu̇-ˈri-sti-k(ə-)lē 

adverb

heuristic

2 of 2

noun

1

: a heuristic (see heuristic entry 1) method or procedure : a process or procedure that involves learning, discovery, or problem-solving by experimental and especially trial-and-error methods

Heuristics are simple if-then rules or norms that are widely accepted; for example, if it costs more it must be more valuable.

—Anthony R. Pratkanis

Ideally, a good machine will often choose the same [chess] move that a heuristic would have suggested but will do so "thoughtfully" rather than mechanically.

—Brad Leithauser

2

: the study or practice of heuristic (see heuristic entry 1) procedure

… explaining to a lovely young student the principles of mathematical search systems and the mysteries of heuristics.

—Marilyn Stasio

3

: heuristic (see heuristic entry 1) argument

Examples of heuristic in a Sentence

Adjective

If Orbitz prevails, its online reservation process alone may blow away the competition. Unlike mainframe-based systems … , Orbitz uses racks of PCs to search fare data, making it easier to scale up computing power. And its intelligent … algorithms evaluate all the possible fares simultaneously instead of employing heuristic shortcuts designed to use as little computing power as possible. —Evan Ratliff, WIRED, September 2000

Because "tradition" has served as a powerful heuristic term, we are always in danger of reifying it … —Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Reading Black, Reading Feminist, 1990

Its heuristic principle would be St. Augustine's axiom that the Old Testament is revealed in the New and the New concealed in the Old … —V. B. Leitch, American Literary Criticism from the Thirties to the Eighties, 1988

Noun

"Cult" is best understood not as a descriptor, but as a command, like a law officer's "Halt!" Its purpose is to stop and contain. A more useful heuristic would be to identify precisely the most disturbing practices, beliefs, or incidents in the world of a "cult" … —Robert A. Orsi, Commonweal, 6 Oct. 2000

Search engines … use heuristics to determine the way in which to order—and thereby prioritize—pages. —Soumen Chakrabarti et al., Scientific American, June 1999

Recent Examples on the Web

Adjective

In the absence of hard data, the kind that become available years or decades after a war, the temptation is to reach for analogies or proverbial wisdom, or any of the other heuristic shortcuts that the psychologist Daniel Kahneman thoroughly described in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow. —Eliot A. Cohen, The Atlantic, 6 Mar. 2026

For most of the 20th century, a useful heuristic held: To glimpse the future of technology, look to America. —Sam Butler-Sloss, semafor.com, 20 Nov. 2025

Noun

Sleep scheduling techniques primarily apply heuristics for periodic check‑ins, event‑driven wake-ups, clustering, and time division to stretch lifetime while meeting QoS targets [5][6]. —IEEE Spectrum, 26 Feb. 2026

To John Ellwood for the innovative rules and heuristics underlying the metadata and timecode matching, and to Jeff Bloom for the groundbreaking waveform matching in the Titan auto-assembly software for digital audio. —Kimberly Nordyke, HollywoodReporter, 18 Feb. 2026

Word History

Etymology

Adjective and Noun

German heuristisch, from New Latin heuristicus, from Greek heuriskein to discover; akin to Old Irish fo-fúair he found

First Known Use

Adjective

1860, in the meaning defined above

Noun

1860, in the meaning defined at sense 2

Rhymes for heuristic

• artistic
• autistic
• ballistic
• cladistic
• holistic
• linguistic
• logistic
• monistic
• patristic
• sadistic
• simplistic
• sophistic