subjectivity

noun sub·jec·tiv·i·ty \ (ˌ)səb-ˌjek-ˈti-və-tē \

Updated on: 19 Apr 2018

Definition of subjectivity

: the quality, state, or nature of being subjective

Any attempt to link landscapes and music together can suffer from some measure of subjectivity.
—David J. Keeling

He thinks that scientists and philosophers have unjustly neglected the subjectivity of conscious experience and that this has made it harder for them to explain some of the workings of the mind.
—Anthony Gottlieb

Recent Examples of subjectivity from the Web

The tension between objectivity and subjectivity is inevitable and ceaseless.

— New York Times, "Nathan Chen Has Taken the Quad to a New Level. Is It Good for Figure Skating?," 2 Jan. 2018
So there still appears to be subjectivity to the rule, although the league’s goal was to minimize that and make a catch easier to officiate.

— rich campbell, chicagotribune.com, "Zach Miller's catch would be touchdown under new rule, NFL says," 26 Mar. 2018
Science is about knowing — or at least attempting to know — the truth about our natural world without subjectivity, without snake oil salesmen, without wishing and hoping.

— latimes.com, "Calendar Letters: Readers react to Chris Erskine's column on the death of his son," 23 Mar. 2018
Most writing style, therefore, reveals itself as a sort of self-conscious disfigurement, marked by extreme subjectivity, fragmentation or metafictional irony.

— sam sacks, WSJ, "Fiction Chronicle: A Closeted Past, Partially Recaptured," 9 Mar. 2018
As the medical tent and the waterglass explain, the Shimmer’s prismatic refractions are an allegory, at least in part, for the perceptive warping of human subjectivity.

— josephine livingstone, The New Republic, "Annihilation Is a Brilliant Splicing of Woolf With Cronenberg," 27 Feb. 2018
Government forecasts on the impact of Brexit were leaked this week, reigniting the debate over subjectivity in projections.

— Bloomberg.com, "Carney Says Brexit Battle Is Switching to Tackling Inflation," 31 Jan. 2018
That, largely, comes down to subjectivity and, of course, factors beyond results.

— SI.com, "World Cup Countdown: 18 Weeks to Go - Are Pozzo's Italy the Greatest National Team Ever?," 15 Feb. 2018
The problem, as the Great Olympic Figure Skating Judging Scandal of 2002 revealed, was that this measure was subject to, well, a lot of subjectivity.

— alice park, Time, "How to Sound Like an Expert While You Watch Olympic Figure Skating," 9 Feb. 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'subjectivity.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

First Known Use of subjectivity

1803

in the meaning defined above

See Words from the same year

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Medical Dictionary

subjectivity

noun sub·jec·tiv·i·ty \ ˌsəb-jek-ˈtiv-ət-ē \

medical Definition of subjectivity

plural subjectivities

1 : subjective character, quality, state, or nature

2 : the personal qualities of an investigator that affect the outcome of scientific or medical research (as by unconsciously communicating a bias to the subject of the experiment)