response
(rɪˈspɒns)
Forms: 4 respouns(e, 4, 6 respons, 5–6 responce, 7– response.
[In ME., a. OF. respuns, respons (mod.F. répons) masc. or response (mod. réponse), fem. In later use directly ad. L. responsum neut. (also late L. responsus masc.), f. respondēre to respond.]
1. a. An answer, a reply.
| c 1300 Beket 825 In a chambre faste iloke alle hi were ibrouȝt, That hi ne scholde ascapie noȝt er hi respounse sede. c 1330 R. Brunne Chron. Wace 11924 Þe chartre þey schewed þer barouns, & seide, ‘swich ys Arthures respouns’. 1338 ― Chron. (1810) 98 What was his respons writen, I ne sauh no herd. 1533 Bellenden Livy i. xix. (S.T.S.) I. 109 It is said þat Turnus was na thing satifyit on his respons. 1589 Puttenham Eng. Poesie iii. xix. (Arb.) 214 Ye haue a figuratiue speach which the Greeks cal Antipophora, I name him the Responce. 1604 R. Cawdrey Table Alph. (1613), Responses, answers. 1673 Cave Prim. Chr. i. vii. 192 The Author of the Questions and Responses. 1675 Baxter Cath. Theol. i. 113 He..needeth no more of mine for the confutation of his vain responses. 1712 Steele Spect. No. 266 ¶4, I heard an old and a young Voice repeating the Questions and Responses of the Church-Catechism. 1751 Harris Hermes Wks. (1841) 161 With respect to the interrogative, the return is necessarily made in words..which are called a response or answer. 1798 Coleridge Anc. Mar. 411 But..speak again, Thy soft response renewing. 1869 A. Harwood tr. E. de Pressensé Early Yrs. Chr. iii. iii. 404 We know the response of ancient philosophy to this question. |
b. transf. and
fig. An action or feeling which answers to some stimulus or influence;
spec. in
Psychol. (
freq. opposed to
stimulus), an observable reaction to some specific stimulus or situation; the fact of such reaction.
| 1815 Shelley Alastor 564 A pine,..to each inconstant blast Yielding one only response. 1860 Tyndall Glac. i. §15. 103 A joyous rush was the creature's first response to the signal. 1875 Jowett Plato (ed. 2) IV. 130 Something which found a response in his own mind seemed to have been lost. 1908 E. L. Thorndike in Ess. Philos. & Psychol. in Honor W. James 597 A situation arouses a response which brings an annoying state of affairs. The probability of a similar response in the future is lessened. 1919 J. B. Watson Psychol. i. 16 Having now examined at some length into the general nature of both stimulus and response, we should be prepared to understand the object of a psychological experiment. 1934 H. Davis in C. Murchison Handbk. Gen. Exper. Psychol. 983 They..constitute an objective response of great value for analyzing the activities of the cortical tissue. 1948 A. C. Kinsey et al. Sexual Behav. Human Male v. 159 Evidence of minimal psychic components with good enough physical responses. 1952 Ford & Beach Patterns Sexual Behav. xii. 239 Her capacity for complete response returned. 1957 B. F. Skinner in Saporta & Bastian Psycholinguistics (1961) v. 228/1 Semantic theory is often confined to the relation between response and stimulus which prevails in the verbal operant called the tact. 1965 in J. Money Sex Research 101 Three women were able to achieve orgasmic response by breast manipulation alone. 1976 Senter & Dimond Psychol. vi. 102 Relaxation and anxiety are competing responses. You must behave in one way or the other. |
c. The way in which an apparatus responds to a stimulus or range of stimuli.
| 1911 H. M. Hobart Dict. Electr. Engin. II. 630/1 The receiver must be sharply tuned so that the variations of frequency may be sufficient to make an appreciable difference in the strength of its response. 1915 W. H. Eccles Wireless Telegr. 245 Fig. 176 shows the response of the detector (change of I) at various values of the intensity of magnetism I and the field H, for four different magnetic cycles. 1926, etc. [see frequency response s.v. frequency 6 a]. 1958 O. R. Frisch Nuclear Handbk. xiv. 16 In designing a scintillation counter the spectrum of the fluorescent radiation must be marked as far as possible with the spectral response of the multiplier. 1961 G. Millerson Television Production iii. 41 Where the tube's response to red is excessive, this may be held back with an appropriate green or blue filter. 1970 J. Earl Tuners & Amplifiers iii. 68 The latest ‘quality’ amplifiers..boast a power response which is almost as good as the frequency response. |
d. Bridge. A reply to a partner's opening (or subsequent) bid.
| 1939 N. de V. Hart Bridge Players' Bedside Bk. x. 52 South's response of Six Clubs showed first round control of clubs. 1947 S. Harris Fund. Princ. Contract Bridge i. iv. 35 It sometimes happens that South is able to make a positive response. 1958 Listener 16 Oct. 611/2 West makes her natural response of Three Diamonds. 1967 P. Anderton Play Bridge iii. 28 The negative response is 2 N.T. in which case the hand will probably be played in 3 H. 1976 Times 1 May 12/6 A minimum response can be shown only by a rebid of the suit. |
2. Eccl. a. = responsory n. 1.
| 1450–1530 Myrr. our Ladye 107 After lessons foloweth Responces. Ibid., Thys fyrste responce ys songe in faythe and in praysynge of the blyssed Trynyte. 1592 tr. Junius on Rev. xix. 3 The song of the Antiphonie or response. 1811 Busby Dict. Mus. (ed. 3), Response, or Responso. The name of a kind of anthem sung in the Roman church after the morning lesson. 1836 Tracts for Times No. 75, Lesson 8. (Homily continued.)..Response 8 (used on the Sundays after Trinity). 1879 Simmons Lay Folks Mass Book 200 The laity..were not allowed to read the lessons in church, nor to say the Alleluia, but only the psalms and the responses (responsoria), without the Alleluia. |
b. A part of the liturgy said or sung by the congregation in reply to the priest. (Correlative to
versicle.)
| 1659 Hammond On Ps. xxxi. 6 Observing their responses most superstitiously. 1710 Steele Tatler No. 213 ¶2 [He] was seen soon after reading the Responses with great Gravity at Six of Clock Prayers. 1797 Mrs. Radcliffe Italian xi, Again he fancied her voice spoke in a part of the plaintive response delivered by the nuns. 1810 Crabbe Borough ii. 16 Where priest and clerk with joint exertion strive..; That, by his periods eloquent and grave; This, by responses, and a well-set stave. 1886 Ruskin Præterita I. 354 The responses of the morning prayer. |
3. An oracular answer.
| 1513 Douglas æneis x. i. 76 Sa feyll responsis of the goddis abufe. a 1660 Hammond (J.), The oracles,..from giving responses in verse, descended to prose. 1687 A. Lovell tr. Thevenot's Trav. i. 37 He that demands the response, roles it [sc. a piece of wood] three times. 1762 Warburton Doctr. Grace i. v, In the Mosaic dispensation.., where the church was conducted in every step, at first by oracular responses, and afterwards by..Prophets. 1822 Shelley tr. Calderon's Mag. Prodig. i. 138 Consider the ambiguous responses Of their oracular statues. 1869 H. F. Tozer Highl. Turkey II. 219 The ancient oracle..from which..the Greeks of his time used to seek responses. |
4. Mus. ‘In a fugue, the repetition of the given subject by another part’ (Busby).
| 1797 Encycl. Brit. (ed. 3) VII. 491/2 Every fugue finds its response in the part immediately following that which commenced. 1854 Cherubini Counterp. & Fugue 63 It may be said that the Response decides the particular kind and nature of the fugue. |
5. pl. = responsion 3.
| 1810 Oxford Univ. Cal. p. ii, Feb. 21, Responses commence. |
6. attrib. and
Comb., as
response function,
response rate;
esp. in
Psychol., as
response bias,
response-movement,
response pattern,
response probability,
response set;
response-contingent adj.;
response time Electr., the time taken for a circuit or measuring device, when subjected to a change in input signal, to change its state by a specified fraction of its total response to that change.
| 1970 Jrnl. Gen. Psychol. LXXXII. 63 These findings appear to be incompatible with the notion that both scales measure ‘*response bias’. |
| 1958 B. Flanagan et al. in Saporta & Bastian Psycholinguistics (1961) 415 (title) The control of stuttering through *response-contingent consequences. 1972 Sci. Amer. May 97/1 The results of such analyses produce response functions..which can be plotted to show the mean responses of different species of trees to conditions of temperature, precipitation and prior growth. |
| 1975 D. G. Fink Electronics Engineers' Handbk. xxv. 25 The antenna and receiver are configured to match a target signal at a particular angle, delay, and frequency. The radar will respond with reduced gain to targets at other angles, delays, and frequencies. This *response function can be expressed as a surface in a four-dimensional coordinate system. |
| 1892 van Liew & Beyer tr. Ziehen's Introd. Physiol. Psychol. i. 14 Goltz has termed the automatic movements ‘*response-movements’. |
| 1936 J. Kantor Objective Psychol. of Gram. xx. 290 For objective psychology, moods are nothing but particular *response-patterns or speech-community styles of utterance. 1965 Brit. Jrnl. Psychol. LVI. 217 (heading) Response patterns and strategies in the dynamics of concept attainment behaviour. |
| 1960 W. N. Dember Psychol. of Perception (1970) viii. 287 All of the word-recognition experiments can be interpreted in terms of *response-probability. |
| 1946 Jrnl. Amer. Statist. Assoc. XLI. 522 The number of mail questionnaires and field interviews required to achieve a specified precision will vary with the *response rate. 1966 Rep. Comm. Inquiry Univ. Oxf. II. 351 The figures for Great Britain are from a survey (with a response rate of 53 per cent.) of those university teachers who responded to the inquiry by the Robbins Committee in 1961–2 (in which the response rate was 86 per cent.). |
| 1970 Jrnl. Gen. Psychol. LXXXII. 64 ‘*Response set’ is a generalized tendency to be agreeable. 1972 D. P. Campbell in J. N. Butcher Objective Personality Assessment vi. 119 Response set, acquiescence and social desirability, are currently popular..even though the data in support of them [as concepts] are will-o'-the-wispy, at best. |
| 1958 R. B. Hurley Junction Transistor Electronics xix. 364 Output *response times are reduced by a factor of 2·5. 1970 Willardson & Beer Semiconductors & Semimetals V. i. 7 The response time is determined by the rate at which the [infrared detector] element warms and cools. 1975 D. G. Fink Electronics Engineers' Handbk. xvii. 49 Performance specifications usually include the response of the system to a step input, measured in terms of response time, rise time, delay time, settling time, and overshoot. |
Hence
reˈsponseless a., giving no response or reply;
reˈsponser, one who makes response.
| 1845 Blackw. Mag. LVIII. 36 The base, cold crowd..Stood round, responseless to his fire. 1845 Jane Robinson Whitehall xix. 221 Mistress Chaloner looked at him..to ascertain who this lively responser was. |