Noun

(en noun)

The way in which something is positioned vis-à-vis its surroundings.

* 1908 , (Kenneth Grahame), (The Wind in the Willows) :

...he being naturally an underground animal by birth and breeding, the situation of Badger's house exactly suited him and made him feel at home; while the Rat, who slept every night in a bedroom the windows of which opened on a breezy river, naturally felt the atmosphere still and oppressive.

The place in which something is situated; a location.

* 1833 , Thomas Hibbert and Robert Buist, The American Flower Garden Directory , page 142:

[Hibíscus] speciòsus is the most splendid, and deserves a situation in every garden.

Position or status with regard to conditions and circumstances.

The combination of circumstances at a given moment; a state of affairs.

*

, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=5 , passage=Then we relapsed into a discomfited silence, and wished we were anywhere else. But Miss Thorn relieved the situation by laughing aloud, and with such a hearty enjoyment that instead of getting angry and more mortified we began to laugh ourselves, and instantly felt better.}}

(UK, dated) A position of employment; a post.

* 1913 , , (Sons and Lovers) , Penguin 2006, page 78:

When he was nineteen, he suddenly left the 'Co-op' office, and got a situation in Nottingham.

* 1946 , Vaughn Horton, Denver Darling, Milt Gabler, :

You take a morning paper from the top of the stack

And read the situations from the front to the back

The only job that's open need a man with a knack

So put it right back in the rack Jack.

A difficult or unpleasant set of circumstances; a problem.

Boss, we've got a situation here...

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.

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