Definition of "a posteriori"

a posteriori

adjective
comparative more a posteriori, superlative most a posteriori
1. (logic) Involving induction of theories from facts.
  Quotations
  What Locke calls "knowledge" they have called "a priori knowledge"; what he calls "opinion" or "belief" they have called "a posteriori" or "empirical knowledge".
  1988, R. S. Woolhouse, The empiricists, Oxford University Press
2. (linguistics, of a constructed language) Developed on a basis of languages which already exist.
adverb
comparative more a posteriori, superlative most a posteriori
1. (logic) In a manner that deduces theories from facts.
  Quotations
  FALLACIES of the modern worldview have to do with the conception of the world as substance or machinery, mistaking abstractions for reality, confusing origins and truth, failing to attribute feeling to things that feel, recognising ethics as exclusively anthropocentric, thinking a posteriori, objectifying facts as separated from values, reducing the complex to the simple and dividing knowledge into distinct disciplines that produce experts who are often wrong.
  1991, New Scientist