Noun

(en noun)

A process by which a task is completed; a way of doing something (followed by the adposition of, to or for before the purpose of the process):

* , chapter=3

, title= The Mirror and the Lamp , passage=One saint's day in mid-term a certain newly appointed suffragan-bishop came to the school chapel, and there preached on “The Inner Life.”  He at once secured attention by his informal method , and when presently the coughing of Jarvis […] interrupted the sermon, he altogether captivated his audience with a remark about cough lozenges being cheap and easily procurable.}}

* {{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=May-June, author= William E. Conner

, title= An Acoustic Arms Race , volume=101, issue=3, page=206-7, magazine=(American Scientist) , passage=Earless ghost swift moths become “invisible” to echolocating bats by forming mating clusters close

A type of theatrical acting wherein the actor utilizes his personal emotions from personal experience to portray a scripted scene.

(programming, object-oriented) A subroutine or function belonging to a class or object.

(slang) Marijuana.

Noun

(en noun)

A cause:

# That which causes something: an efficient cause, a proximate cause.

#* 1996 , (w), : Evolution and the Meanings of Life , page 198:

There is a reason why so many should be symmetrical: The selective advantage in a symmetrical complex is enjoyed by all the subunits

# A motive for an action or a determination.

#* 1806 , Anonymous, Select Notes to Book XXI, in, (Alexander Pope), translator, The (Odyssey) of (Homer) , volume 6 (London, F.J. du Roveray), page 37:

This is the reason why he proposes to offer a libation, to atone for the abuse of the day by their diversions.

#* 1881 , (Henry James), (The Portrait of a Lady) , chapter 10:

Ralph Touchett, for reasons best known to himself, had seen fit to say that Gilbert Osmond was not a good fellow

# An excuse: a thought or a consideration offered in support of a determination or an opinion; that which is offered or accepted as an explanation.

#* 1966 , (Graham Greene), ((Penguin Classics) edition, ISBN 0140184945), page 14:

I have forgotten the reason' he gave for not travelling by air. I felt sure that it was not the correct ' reason , and that he suffered from a heart trouble which he kept to himself.

(label) Rational]] thinking (or the capacity for it; the cognitive [[faculty, faculties, collectively, of conception, judgment, deduction and intuition.

* 1970 , (Hannah Arendt), On Violence (ISBN 0156695006), page 62:

And the specific distinction between man and beast is now, strictly speaking, no longer reason (the lumen naturale of the human animal) but science

*{{quote-magazine, date=2014-06-21, volume=411, issue=8892, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Magician’s brain , passage=The [Isaac] Newton that emerges from the [unpublished] manuscripts is far from the popular image of a rational practitioner of cold and pure reason . The architect of modern science was himself not very modern. He was obsessed with alchemy.}}

(label) Something reasonable, in accordance with thought; justice.

* (rfdate) (Edmund Spenser):

I was promised, on a time, To have reason for my rhyme.

Ratio; proportion.

(Barrow)