as in assumptions
something taken as being true or factual and used as a starting point for a course of action or reasoning
it's a given that television viewers are influenced by advertising, even consciously or subconsciously
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Recent Examples of givens
Where the show’s values were once givens, almost diorama labels, now they’re presented as more fugitive and unstable, what its characters would hope the world to be.
—
Jackson McHenry, Vulture, 16 Oct. 2025
Private cloud is also where organizations can focus on delivering AI and what’s next, knowing that security, governance and compliance are givens rather than points of concern.
—Patrick Moorhead, Forbes.com, 26 Aug. 2025
Jackson McHenry, Vulture, 16 Oct. 2025
Private cloud is also where organizations can focus on delivering AI and what’s next, knowing that security, governance and compliance are givens rather than points of concern.
—Patrick Moorhead, Forbes.com, 26 Aug. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for givens
assumptions
Noun
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Physically frail, yet in full verbal command, Julian doesn’t talk to Lori so much as at her, pausing only to fire off questions that harden, in midair, into assumptions.—
Justin Chang,
New Yorker,
3 Apr. 2026
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Those assumptions are shaped by training data drawn predominantly from English-language sources based in the United States.—
Gareth Barkin,
The Conversation,
2 Apr. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Givens.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/givens. Accessed 8 Apr. 2026.
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