subjective
adj. · n.-
1 based on personal opinion (adj.) B2 Upper Intermediatebased on your own feelings and opinions rather than on facts.
pertaining to or characteristic of an individual's personal beliefs, feelings, or tastes rather than external facts.
ExampleThe way we judge art is very subjective because everyone has different tastes.
ExampleThe review was highly subjective, focusing more on the critic's personal dislike of the lead actor than on the technical merits of the film.
-
2 internal experience (adj.) C1 Advanced Academic Philosophydescribing a feeling or experience that happens inside your mind and cannot be seen by others.
relating to the internal mental experience of a subject as opposed to the external world of objects.
ExamplePain is a subjective experience because only the person feeling it knows how much it hurts.
ExamplePhenomenology explores the subjective nature of consciousness, prioritising the individual's lived experience over abstract scientific data.
Show 2 more sensesShow fewer
-
3 grammatical subject (adj.) C2 Proficiency Technical Sciencerelating to the subject of a sentence (the person or thing doing the action).
relating to the grammatical subject or the nominative case.
ExampleIn the sentence 'I saw him', the word 'I' is in the subjective case.
ExampleThe student struggled to distinguish between subjective and objective pronouns when constructing complex relative clauses.
UsageIn modern linguistics, 'nominative' is more common than 'subjective' for this sense.
- nominative
-
4 the subjective case (n.) C2 Proficiency Technical Sciencethe form of a noun or pronoun used when it is the subject of a verb.
the nominative case or a word in that case.
ExampleThe teacher explained that 'he' is the subjective and 'him' is the objective.
ExampleThe analysis of the text required identifying every instance where the subjective was used to emphasise the agency of the protagonist.
- nominative
From subject + -ive.
- Nounsubjectivity
- Adjectivesubjective