non-absoluteadj.n.

1654 P. English Surv. Policy 13 The people of Israel did seek a non-absolute and regulated King.

1678 V. Alsop Melius Inquirendum ii. ii. 170 If the non-absolute necessity of the Terms of Communion be a warrant of separation, there would be no such thing as Schism at all by unwarrantable separation from a Church.

1865 Proc. Royal Soc. 14 159 The common non-absolute unit of work involving the product of a weight into a length is styled kilogrammetre or foot-pound.

1909 Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 10 133 To obtain a non-absolute invariant [etc.].

1941 Mind 50 69 Turning now to rest in a non-absolute sense,..we may define this as meaning that the positional configuration of a body remains unaltered, though its constituents change.

1990 R. Barnett Idea of Higher Educ. (BNC) 154 Recognizing the non-absolute character of knowledge does not mean that the lecturer and the student are equal in their epistemological authority.

a1834 S. T. Coleridge Specimens of Table Talk (1835) I. 107 A fall of some sort or other—the creation, as it were, of the non-absolute—is the fundamental postulate of the moral history of man.

1907 Mind 16 61 The non-absolute is known in but not as the Absolute.

1955 Sci. Monthly 80 379/1 Whatever his ideas on the absolute and nonabsolute in scientific knowledge, [etc.].