as in rational
having the ability to reason
judged by the courts not to be a reasoning being who could be held accountable for his crimes
Synonyms & Similar Words
Relevance
Antonyms & Near Antonyms
as in logic
the thought processes that have been established as leading to valid solutions to problems
your reasoning here is faulty, for although all wives are spouses, not all spouses are wives
Synonyms & Similar Words
Antonyms & Near Antonyms
1
as in understanding
to form an opinion or reach a conclusion through reasoning and information
she reasoned that since all of the cakes were on sale for the same price, she might as well pick the biggest one
Synonyms & Similar Words
2
as in arguing
to state (something) as a reason in support of or against something under consideration
he tried to reason that no one in their right mind would buy his brother's old video games, but they were put on the online auction anyway
Synonyms & Similar Words
Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of reasoning
Jared Perlo, NBC news, 24 Mar. 2026
That choice, in turn, shapes whether public policy aims to nudge behavior, educate citizens or redesign environments so that human reasoning can operate at its best.
—Alejandro Hortal-Sánchez, The Conversation, 24 Mar. 2026
Aamir Khollam, Interesting Engineering, 5 Mar. 2026
In reasoning training, study participants worked on the ability to solve problems that follow a serial pattern, like identifying the pattern in a letter or number series.
—Akshay Syal, NBC news, 9 Feb. 2026
See All Example Sentences for reasoning
Noun
By shifting computing resources away from Sora, OpenAI could reallocate the computing chips to more lucrative coding, reasoning or text-generation tasks.
—Jared Perlo, NBC news, 24 Mar. 2026
That choice, in turn, shapes whether public policy aims to nudge behavior, educate citizens or redesign environments so that human reasoning can operate at its best.
—Alejandro Hortal-Sánchez, The Conversation, 24 Mar. 2026
Verb
Safety and reasoning transparency OpenAI also introduced a new safety evaluation focused on chain-of-thought reasoning, the step-by-step explanations models generate while solving problems.
—Aamir Khollam, Interesting Engineering, 5 Mar. 2026
In reasoning training, study participants worked on the ability to solve problems that follow a serial pattern, like identifying the pattern in a letter or number series.
—Akshay Syal, NBC news, 9 Feb. 2026
See All Example Sentences for reasoning
Recent Examples of Synonyms for reasoning
Adjective
-
If more teams have lottery access and the worst teams don’t gain much by being the worst, then more franchises can justify late-season losing as a rational move.—
C.J. Holmes,
New York Daily News,
27 Mar. 2026
-
Condemning Israel for its treatment of Palestinian dreams and aspirations is a rational choice.—
Chicago Tribune,
Chicago Tribune,
27 Mar. 2026
Noun
-
On social media, make jokes that don’t follow logic or build toward a punch line, but rather rely on jump cuts and endless captions.—
Emily Menez,
New Yorker,
31 Mar. 2026
-
As a boy, Caldwell never doubted his father’s logic.—
Namir Khaliq,
Big Think,
31 Mar. 2026
Verb
-
Vera Rubin, an astronomer whose observations of galaxy rotation curves in the 1970s provided the first robust evidence for dark matter's existence, embraced her Jewish faith as a guide to understanding her role in the universe.—
ABC News,
ABC News,
29 Mar. 2026
-
Preparation means understanding your client’s business, their operational needs, and their financial guardrails.—
Allen Buchanan,
Oc Register,
28 Mar. 2026
Verb
-
According to the judge’s order, Homeland Security is arguing that the legal basis of the deportations stems from a Biden-era agreement in which Mexico agreed to accept up to 30,000 Cubans, Nicaraguans, Haitians and Venezuelans monthly.—
Syra Ortiz Blanes,
Miami Herald,
27 Mar. 2026
-
The manager of a nearby bodega said the victims were arguing with another teen before the shooting erupted.—
Kerry Burke,
New York Daily News,
27 Mar. 2026
Adjective
-
Flexible loads, intelligent storage, and advanced demand coordination should be treated as capacity resources in grid planning, with regulatory frameworks updated accordingly.—
Brian Barlow,
Fortune,
28 Mar. 2026
-
This innovation signals a shift toward more intelligent, cooperative, and autonomous forms of warfare.—
Prabhat Ranjan Mishra,
Interesting Engineering,
28 Mar. 2026
Noun
-
New romance is a reason to celebrate!—
USA TODAY,
USA Today,
1 Apr. 2026
-
The future of legal sports betting States that have not yet legalized sports betting may still see similar trends in financial insecurity for reasons beyond spillover effects.—
Sasha Rogelberg,
Fortune,
31 Mar. 2026
Verb
-
The very legitimacy of deriving general principles from the particulars of experience can never be established from experience without already having the principle in hand.—
Christopher Beha,
New Yorker,
14 Feb. 2026
-
Large language models represent the first technology capable of analyzing, contextualizing and deriving insights from this avalanche of information.—
Sahar Hashmi,
Forbes.com,
25 Jan. 2026
Verb
-
Many of his peers and former rivals have long since retired, burned out by the task of recruiting and coaching while also raising funds from boosters in order to build title-contending rosters.—
Greg Rosenstein,
NBC news,
26 Mar. 2026
-
An Ohio congresswoman is asking a judge to issue an order to take Donald Trump‘s name off the Kennedy Center, contending that the board of the arts institution violated the law in that only Congress can make such a change.—
Ted Johnson,
Deadline,
25 Mar. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Reasoning.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/reasoning. Accessed 4 Apr. 2026.
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