entailment.

A logical relationship in which one statement must be true if another is true.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• logical entailment
• relation of entailment
• test an entailment

On the page

The claimed entailment fails because the premise can be true while the conclusion is false.

Students tested the entailment by constructing a possible counterexample.

An entailment remains even when the speaker did not intend the resulting conclusion.

Usage notes

Primary category: academic. Academic, especially logic and linguistics. Entailment differs from a likely implication or an association; a counterexample can show that the claimed relationship does not hold. Singular: entailment; plural: entailments. Derived family (not inflections): entail.