principle

IPA: prˈɪnsʌpʌɫ

A fundamental assumption or guiding belief.
A rule used to choose among solutions to a problem.
(sometimes pluralized) Moral rule or aspect.
(physics) A rule or law of nature, or the basic idea on how the laws of nature are applied.
A fundamental essence, particularly one producing a given quality.
A chemical compound within plant or animal tissue that is characteristic of it and more or less peculiar to it, such that it defines the character of that tissue from a human viewpoint (as for example nicotine in tobacco).
A source, or origin; that from which anything proceeds; fundamental substance or energy; primordial substance; ultimate element, or cause.
An original faculty or endowment.
(obsolete) A beginning.
Misspelling of principal. [(finance, uncountable) The money originally invested or loaned, on which basis interest and returns are calculated.]

(transitive) To equip with principles; to establish, or fix, in certain principles; to impress with any tenet or rule of conduct.

Examples of "principle" in Sentences

Ignorance about the creation that can't be overcome even in principle is agnosticism not atheism
But it appears that Misubishi, at least in principle is commited to thinking slightly outside the box.
The solution in principle is a weak dollar, which should provide export jobs somewhere in the US economy.
The solution in principle is a weak dollar, which should provide export jobs somewhere in the US economy ….
Why, in principle, is it not possible to distinguish between natural phenomenon and a directed event in designating a most plausible cause?
However, the key difference in principle is whether the people ` s liberty should be sacrificed to this end (despite scant evidence it provides the means).
And I commented before that all the practical objections you raise are right, and any kind of "pure" national consumption tax of the sort I am discussing in principle is impossible in practice.
Douglas sometimes says that all the States (and it is part of this same proposition I have been discussing) that have become free have become so upon his great principle; that the State of Illinois itself came into the Union as a Slave State, and that the people, upon the great principle of Popular Sovereignty, have since made it a Free State.