The Collaborative International Dictionary
Believe \Be*lieve"\, v. i.
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To have a firm persuasion, esp. of the truths of religion; to have a persuasion approaching to certainty; to exercise belief or faith.
Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.
--Mark ix. 24.With the heart man believeth unto righteousness.
--Rom. x. 10. -
To think; to suppose. I will not believe so meanly of you. --Fielding. To believe in.
To believe that the subject of the thought (if a person or thing) exists, or (if an event) that it has occurred, or will occur; -- as, to believe in the resurrection of the dead. ``She does not believe in Jupiter.''
--J. H. Newman.To believe that the character, abilities, and purposes of a person are worthy of entire confidence; -- especially that his promises are wholly trustworthy. ``Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.''
--John xiv. 1.-
To believe that the qualities or effects of an action or state are beneficial: as, to believe in sea bathing, or in abstinence from alcoholic beverages.
To believe on, to accept implicitly as an object of religious trust or obedience; to have faith in.
Usage examples of "to believe in".
She so wanted to believe in the integrity of the man who could stir her senses more strongly than any man ever had.
Now that we had actually started, I began to believe in the reality of the undertaking!
Joe had experienced some trouble in getting the rebellious spirits to believe in it.
But of course if you do that you have lost everything you profess to believe in!
Columbus himself must have started to consider how it was one thing to believe in such enlightened ideas as a round earth, yet quite another to stake one's life on the notion.
Mac partisans want to believe in the image of Apple purveyed in those ads, and in the notion that Macs are somehow fundamentally different from other computers, while Windows people want to believe that they are getting something for their money, engaging in a respectable business transaction).
As I've explained, selling OSes for money is a basically untenable position, and the only way Apple and Microsoft can get away with it is by pursuing technological advancements as aggressively as they can, and by getting people to believe in, and to pay for, a particular image: in the case of Apple, that of the creative free thinker, and in the case of Microsoft, that of the respectable techno-bourgeois.
For people who feel a need to believe in conspiracies, here's one sitting there waiting for them.
I see no reason, therefore, to believe in any sort of God, however vague and however attenuated.
How can you possibly allow yourselves to be so stupid as to believe in an idiotic thing like a jinx.
There was a readiness to believe in things beyond reality even though only a few barriers were actually overcome and few advances made into the realm of a future psychiatry.