The Collaborative International Dictionary
Proximate \Prox"i*mate\, a. [L. proximatus, p. p. of proximare to come near, to approach, fr. proximus the nearest, nest, superl. of propior nearer, and prope, adv., near.] Nearest; next immediately preceding or following. ``Proximate ancestors.'' --J. S. Harford. The proximate natural causes of it [the deluge]. --T. Burnet. Proximate analysis (Chem.), an analysis which determines the proximate principles of any substance, as contrasted with an ultimate analysis. Proximate cause.
A cause which immediately precedes and produces the effect, as distinguished from the remote, mediate, or predisposing cause.
--I. Watts.-
That which in ordinary natural sequence produces a specific result, no independent disturbing agencies intervening.
Proximate principle (Physiol. Chem.), one of a class of bodies existing ready formed in animal and vegetable tissues, and separable by chemical analysis, as albumin, sugar, collagen, fat, etc.
Syn: Nearest; next; closest; immediate; direct.
Cause \Cause\ (k[add]z), n. [F. cause, fr. L. causa. Cf. Cause, v., Kickshaw.]
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That which produces or effects a result; that from which anything proceeds, and without which it would not exist.
Cause is substance exerting its power into act, to make one thing begin to be.
--Locke. That which is the occasion of an action or state; ground; reason; motive; as, cause for rejoicing.
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Sake; interest; advantage. [Obs.]
I did it not for his cause.
--2 Cor. vii. 12. (Law) A suit or action in court; any legal process by which a party endeavors to obtain his claim, or what he regards as his right; case; ground of action.
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Any subject of discussion or debate; matter; question; affair in general.
What counsel give you in this weighty cause!
--Shak. -
The side of a question, which is espoused, advocated, and upheld by a person or party; a principle which is advocated; that which a person or party seeks to attain.
God befriend us, as our cause is just.
--Shak.The part they take against me is from zeal to the cause.
--Burke.Efficient cause, the agent or force that produces a change or result.
Final cause, the end, design, or object, for which anything is done.
Formal cause, the elements of a conception which make the conception or the thing conceived to be what it is; or the idea viewed as a formative principle and co["o]perating with the matter.
Material cause, that of which anything is made.
Proximate cause. See under Proximate.
To make common cause with, to join with in purposes and aims.
--Macaulay.Syn: Origin; source; mainspring; motive; reason; incitement; inducement; purpose; object; suit; action.
Wiktionary
n. (context legal English) An event which, in a natural and continuous sequence, unbroken by any efficient intervening cause, produces an injury, and without which the injury would not have occurred.
Wikipedia
In the law, a proximate cause is an event sufficiently related to a legally recognizable injury to be held to be the cause of that injury. There are two types of causation in the law: cause-in-fact, and proximate (or legal) cause. Cause-in-fact is determined by the "but for" test: But for the action, the result would not have happened. For example, but for running the red light, the collision would not have occurred. For an act to cause a harm, both tests must be met; proximate cause is a legal limitation on cause-in-fact.
The formal Latin term for "but for" (cause-in-fact) causation, is sine qua non causation.
Usage examples of "proximate cause".
In this small reduction in length of the pulvinus of the rudimentary leaflets of Desmodium, we apparently have the proximate cause of their great and rapid circumnutating movement, in contrast with that of the almost rudimentary leaflets of the Mimosa.
But we may go further: swallowing arsenic is not really the proximate cause of death, since a man might be shot through the head immediately after taking the dose, and then it would not be of arsenic that he would die.
Joe just seemed to have a general-ized circulatory failure, from no proximate cause at all.
For example, the proximate cause of a marriage breakup may be a husband's discovery of his wife's extramarital affairs, but the ultimate explanation may be the husband's chronic insensitivity and the couple's basic incompatibility that drove the wife to affairs.
Ordinary cases of liability arise out of a choice which was the proximate cause of the harm upon which the action is founded.
Looking up in surprise, Zulkeh was even more astonished to discover that the large iron gate, the very item the complexities of whose secret of opening had been the proximate cause of his study, was even now, at that very moment, lying flat upon the ledge.
But according to professors Dallek and Jervis, the proximate cause of the Ayatollah Khomeini's rise to power was not Jimmy Carter's abandonment of the Shah, but the fact that the Shah ever held power at all.
I have to have a proximate cause, like toxemia or a clot in the brain.
Yes, economic dislocation caused by the upheaval of the last war is the proximate, proximate cause of unrest, but the root goes much deeper, deeper.