Ratiocination

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Ratiocination is a noun that denotes the process of reasoning. It is accomplished by logically deducing a consequence from premises.

The word was used in the eighteenth and nineteeth centuries, but is rarely employed today. Samuel Butler's seventeenth century work Hudibras (Part I, Canto I, Line 77) had the lines, "He'd run in debt by disputation, And pay with ratiocination." Edgar Allan Poe included the term in his highly literate tales of detection. His follower, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, however, used the words pure deductive logical reasoning as a more common- sounding substitute.