1Build or make (something, typically a building, road, or machine)

1. 1.1 Form (an idea or theory) by bringing together various conceptual elements.
   poetics should construct a theory of literary discourse

   Example sentencesExamples

   • By the beginning of the 1630s, however, Descartes embarked on a more ambitious plan to construct a systematic theory of knowledge, including physics.
   • Some freedom in the selection of facts to be explained exists only during the first attempts to construct a theory.
   • We must also examine who has constructed or is constructing the cultural beliefs that legitimize violence against women and whose interests are served by these claims.
   • Instead, it is a method of constructing an interpretation that resonates within the present.
   • The notion that we have to construct the idea of self and an authorial voice (in your head or in the text) in such reductive pronoun-based terminology is, I think, a flawed one.
   • What have been the building blocks from which those children have constructed their ideas of how men and women relate to one another?
   • To construct the null hypothesis in this test, we started with the observed number of species and assumed a constant rate of origination.
   • Even the fastest writers agree that conceiving and constructing the ideas behind a play take time.
   • He was a dedicated experimenter, unwilling to construct abstract theories to which his results had to conform.
   • Although it's a blind case with no useful help received from any corner, our team has been able to construct three theories which are only probabilities.
   • An important tenet in constructivist theory is evaluating evidence to construct a global interpretation of an event or era.
   • Moreover, his attempts to construct theories of good design were met with a lukewarm reception.
   • Stereotypes were constructed from selective memories and were reinforced by rhymes and slogans.
   • When examining the world through the lens of multiple perspectives, students learned to think critically and to evaluate sources carefully to construct theories of their own.
   • Feminist analyses of woman's lot tend to focus exclusively on gender and do not provide a solid foundation on which to construct feminist theory.
   • When you get fluent in another language and start to think in it you take on certain freedoms because you can construct ideas, create things in that language to get yourself out of trouble.
   • What role do state institutions play in shaping identities and constructing beliefs about deviance that privilege some groups and pathologize others?
   • For the planets, however, he refused to construct a theory, contenting himself with compiling a list of observations from which he showed the insufficiency of previous planetary models.
   • With no true picture of the nature of the job, it's very easy for people to start constructing conspiracy theories.
   • For the most part, people read books to construct a favorable self-image for themselves.

   Synonyms

   formulate, form, put together

   create, devise, design, invent, compose, concoct, contrive, work out, hatch

   fashion, mould, model, shape, frame

   forge, engineer, fabricate, manufacture, hammer out, thrash out
2. 1.2Grammar Form (a sentence) according to grammatical rules.
   these rules tell us how to construct a grammatical sentence in a given language

   Example sentencesExamples

   • An affected individual, after a stroke, tumour or wound to the area, loses the ability to construct grammatical sentences.
   • Your child's growing grammatical skills will help him to construct quality sentences, then build paragraphs and essays.
   • We begin to understand the ways in which the alphabet is used to create words, and grammar to construct sentences.
   • So the child follows the pattern to construct his own sentence based on a pattern, and then analyzes it he sees how the different parts of the sentence can be rearranged in relationship to each other.
   • If you have difficulty constructing complex sentences, stick with your old friend the subject-verb-object construction.
3. 1.3Geometry Draw or delineate (a geometrical figure) accurately to given conditions.
   construct a square equal in area to a given circle

   Example sentencesExamples

   • You can construct a pyramid by drawing a polygon (to serve as the base), then joining each vertex of the polygon to a point not in the plane of the polygon.
   • The problem of the hidden figure arises because all quantifiable data depends on how the figures are constructed and interpreted.
   • Ancient Greek geometers knew that the number of solids that can be constructed from regular geometric figures is limited to five.
   • Before continuing with the quote we should note that Hippocrates is trying to ‘square a lune’ by which he means to construct a square equal in area to the lune.
   • The problem was, given a circle, to construct geometrically a square equal in area to the given circle.

1An idea or theory containing various conceptual elements, typically one considered to be subjective and not based on empirical evidence.

1. 1.1Linguistics A group of words forming a phrase.
   the appropriateness of the grammatical construct is illustrated

   Example sentencesExamples

   • To many modern critics, this is a philosophical or theoretical weakness, an inability to consider the plays as ultimately linguistic constructs.
   • Poems reach their audiences not as abstract linguistic constructs that are pretty much the same whatever their material published form, but either as performance or as printed artifacts.
   • The phrase was an elegant construct, and so was the American version.
   • But the problem stems not only from the constructs of English, but also the influence of Latin grammatical structures.
   • Routing services let you define rules and service invocation sequences to create a simple sequence of if-then constructs.
2. 1.2 A physical thing which is deliberately built or formed.
   a transgenic construct

   Example sentencesExamples

   • Both loops were placed in an aluminum snap hook to mount the construct in the load frame.
   • Physical constructs are also unlikely to be reusable for other functions.
   • The structures of these constructs are diagrammed along with the results.
   • He leapt into the air, smashing through the high ceiling and looking for the supportive structures of the construct.
   • Transgenic DNA constructs have been used to rescue mutant genes, express reporter genes, and test the relationship of gene structure and function in vivo.
   • Behind him, the screen displayed a giant construct, something like a battleship with two huge bulges on the side of it.
   • However, logistics officer training, the foundational pillar that supports the entire construct, is out of balance.
   • In this work, we further modify the Zahalak model to account for inhomogeneous strain fields in constructs whose cell orientations have a significant out-of-plane component.
   • A pilot survey was then conducted and the preliminarily analysis assisted the researcher in determining that an appropriate instrument to measure the constructs had been designed.
   • Support Armors were humanoid constructs of purely mechanical origin, no biological components were contained within them, other than the pilot.
   • The structural relations between the constructs under investigation and the items are hypothesized a priori by the researcher and then statistically tested.
   • Similar comparisons could be possible between constructs with different cell types, or produced under different combinations of experimental conditions.
   • The constructs used contained a transit peptide from granule-bound starch synthase which enables the delivery of the fluorescent protein into the stroma of amyloplasts and other plastids.
   • The mandala, with its divine and esoteric connotations, has been a key construct in temple building since Vedic times.
   • Simultaneously to portray the construct as a prison or trap and also to suggest the possibility of dismantling it from the inside, is the challenge.