Hypothesis vs Hypo - What's the difference?
hypothesis | hypo |
(sciences) Used loosely, a tentative conjecture explaining an observation, phenomenon or scientific problem that can be tested by further observation, investigation and/or experimentation. As a scientific term of art, see the attached quotation. Compare to theory, and quotation given there.
* 2005 , Ronald H. Pine, http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/intelligent_design_or_no_model_creationism, 15 October 2005:
(general) An assumption taken to be true for the purpose of argument or investigation.
(grammar) The antecedent of a conditional statement.
(obsolete) Melancholy; a fit of ‘hypochondria’; a morbid depression (obsolete by 1881 according to Eric Partridge.
*1711' "I have a better Stomach tha usuall and have perfectly forgot what the '''Hyppo means",Joseph Collett, merchant, writing from Rio de Janeiro, Oct 15, 1711, in his ''Private Letter Books'', edited by H. H. Dodwell in 1933. (cited by Eric Partidge, ''A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventinoal English
*1837' Abraham Lincoln: Tell your sister I dont want to hear any more about selling out and moving. That gives me the '''hypo whenever I think of it. (Letter to Mary S. Owens,May 7. 1837 , ''Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln . Volume 1.
*1851 , Herman Melville, Moby-Dick :
*:whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.
*:But thou sayest, methinks that white-lead chapter about whiteness is but a white flag hung out from a craven soul; thou surrenderest to a hypo , Ishmael.(Chapter 42, "The Whiteness of the Whale")
(photography) sodium thiosulfate, a photographic fixing agent.
(slang) A hypoglycaemia attack in a person with diabetes.
(informal) The substance sodium hyposulfite.
(slang) A hypodermic syringe.
(slang, finance, British) Hypothecation.
(informal, among law students and their professors) A hypothetical case.
(informal, zoology) A hypomelanistic snake.
As nouns the difference between hypothesis and hypo
is that hypothesis is (sciences) used loosely, a tentative conjecture explaining an observation, phenomenon or scientific problem that can be tested by further observation, investigation and/or experimentation as a scientific term of art, see the attached quotation compare to theory, and quotation given there while hypo is (obsolete) melancholy; a fit of ‘hypochondria’; a morbid depression (obsolete by 1881 according to eric partridge.hypothesis
English
(wikipedia hypothesis)Noun
(hypotheses)- Far too many of us have been taught in school that a scientist, in the course of trying to figure something out, will first come up with a "hypothesis" (a guess or surmise—not necessarily even an "educated" guess). ... [But t]he word "hypothesis" should be used, in science, exclusively for a reasoned, sensible, knowledge-informed explanation for why some phenomenon exists or occurs. An hypothesis can be as yet untested; can have already been tested; may have been falsified; may have not yet been falsified, although tested; or may have been tested in a myriad of ways countless times without being falsified; and it may come to be universally accepted by the scientific community. An understanding of the word "hypothesis," as used in science, requires a grasp of the principles underlying Occam's Razor and Karl Popper's thought in regard to "falsifiability"—including the notion that any respectable scientific hypothesis must, in principle, be "capable of" being proven wrong (if it should, in fact, just happen to be wrong), but none can ever be proved to be true. One aspect of a proper understanding of the word "hypothesis," as used in science, is that only a vanishingly small percentage of hypotheses could ever potentially become a theory.