Belief

n.	1.	Assent to a proposition or affirmation, or the acceptance of a fact, opinion, or assertion as real or true, without immediate personal knowledge; reliance upon word or testimony; partial or full assurance without positive knowledge or absolute certainty; persuasion; conviction; confidence; as, belief of a witness; the belief of our senses. Belief admits of all degrees, from the slightest suspicion to the fullest assurance. - Reid.
	2.	(Theol.) A persuasion of the truths of religion; faith. No man can attain [to] belief by the bare contemplation of heaven and earth. - Hooker.
	3.	The thing believed; the object of belief. Superstitious prophecies are not only the belief of fools, but the talk sometimes of wise men. - Bacon.
	4.	A tenet, or the body of tenets, held by the advocates of any class of views; doctrine; creed. In the heat of persecution to which Christian belief was subject upon its first promulgation. - Hooker. Ultimate belief a first principle incapable of proof; an intuitive truth; an intuition. - Sir W. Hamilton.

Noun	1.	belief - any cognitive content held as true Antonyms: unbelief, disbelief - a rejection of belief
	2.	belief - a vague idea in which some confidence is placed; "his impression of her was favorable"; "what are your feelings about the crisis?"; "it strengthened my belief in his sincerity"; "I had a feeling that she was lying" Synonyms: impression, notion, feeling, opinion

BELIEF. The conviction of the mind, arising from evidence received, or from information derived, not from actual perception by our senses, but from. the relation or information of others who have had the means of acquiring actual knowledge of the facts and in whose qualifications for acquiring that knowledge, and retaining it, and afterwards in communicating it, we can place confidence. " Without recurring to the books of metaphysicians' "says Chief Justice Tilghman, 4 Serg. & Rawle, 137, "let any man of plain common sense, examine the operations of, his own mind, he will assuredly find that on different subjects his belief is different. I have a firm belief that, the moon revolves round the earth. I may believe, too, that there are mountains and valleys in the moon; but this belief is not so strong, because the evidence is weaker." Vide 1 Stark. Ev. 41; 2 Pow. Mortg. 555; 1 Ves. 95; 12 Ves. 80; 1 P. A. Browne's R 258; 1 Stark. Ev. 127; Dyer, 53; 2 Hawk. c. 46, s. 167; 3 Wil. 1, s. 427; 2 Bl. R. 881; Leach, 270; 8 Watts, R. 406; 1 Greenl. Ev. Sec. 7-13, a.

a belief, acceptance, acquiescence, arrogance, article of faith, assent, assurance, assuredness, axiom, canon, certainty, cocksureness, concept, confidentness, courage, credibility, credit, credo, dependence, doctrine, dogma, eye, fundamental, hubris, idea, intuition, judgement, law, maxim, mind, orthodoxy, overconfidence, oversureness, overweening, overweeningness, poise, pomposity, positiveness, precept, pride, principle, principles, religion, religious belief, religious faith, security, self-assurance, self-confidence, self-importance, self-reliance, sentiment, settled belief, subjective certainty, sureness, surety, system of beliefs, teaching, tenet, theology, tradition, trustworthiness

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