- conversion
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/keuhn verr"zheuhn, -sheuhn/, n.1. the act or process of converting; state of being converted.2. change in character, form, or function.3. spiritual change from sinfulness to righteousness.4. change from one religion, political belief, viewpoint, etc., to another.5. a change of attitude, emotion, or viewpoint from one of indifference, disbelief, or antagonism to one of acceptance, faith, or enthusiastic support, esp. such a change in a person's religion.6. a physical transformation from one material or state to another: conversion of coal, water, and air into nylon.7. the act of obtaining equivalent value, as of money or units of measurement, in an exchange or calculation: conversion of francs into dollars.8. a physical, structural, or design change or transformation from one state or condition to another, esp. to effect a change in function: conversion of a freighter into a passenger liner.9. a substitution of one component for another so as to effect a change: conversion from oil heat to gas heat.10. Math. a change in the form or units of an expression.11. Logic. the transposition of the subject and predicate of a proposition, as "No good man is unhappy" becomes by conversion "No unhappy man is good."12. Law.a. unauthorized assumption and exercise of rights of ownership over personal property belonging to another.b. change from realty into personalty, or vice versa, as in the sale or purchase of land or mining coal.13. Football. a score made on a try for a point after touchdown by place-kicking or drop-kicking the ball over the bar between the goalposts or by completing a pass in or running the ball into the end zone.14. Psychoanal. the process by which a repressed psychic event, idea, feeling, memory, or impulse is represented by a bodily change or symptom.15. Physics. the production of radioactive material in a process in which one nuclear fuel is converted into another by the capture of neutrons. Cf. breeding (def. 6).16. Computers.a. the process of changing software designed to run on one computer system to run on another.b. the change from an existing computer system to a new computer system.c. the act of transferring or copying data stored on one storage medium to another storage medium.d. the process of changing the base that a number or numbers are written in.17. the transformation of material from a form suitable for printing by one process to a form suitable for another process: a halftone gravure conversion.[1300-50; ME conversio(u)n ( < AF) < L conversion- (s. of conversio) a complete change. See CONVERSE2, -ION]
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▪ lawin law, unauthorized possession of personal property causing curtailment of the owner's possession or alteration of the property. The essence of conversion is not benefit to the wrongful taker but detriment to the rightful owner.Conversion concerns possession, not ownership; thus, unauthorized taking of an object from a renter is the same as if the renter were owner. The property must be personal—as opposed to land—but may be merely a paper (e.g., a club membership card) entitling the possessor to something.To be conversion, a taking of property must be without the owner's consent. There must be some act giving the taker some control over the object, though actual physical removal is not essential.The taking need not be malicious or even knowledgeable. Thus, one can commit conversion unaware of the owner's claim—although sometimes the owner must give notice of ownership (when a taker might believe the item has been abandoned). If the owner's mistaken belief that the object is not his causes a wrongful taking, however, that taking is not conversion.Besides ordinary unauthorized takings, certain exceptional situations constitute conversion: detention of goods under an invalid contract; obtaining goods by fraud or duress; sale of another's property, if delivered; taking of specific money (e.g., in a lost wallet).Legal remedies for conversion used to be a tangle of formalities under the common law, but modern statutes have greatly simplified these. Generally the remedies for conversion allow return of the object taken and compensation for deprivation of its use, interest that would have been earned by the monetary value of the object and the cost of seeking its return (not including attorney's fees).▪ logicin syllogistic, or traditional, logic, interchanging the subject and predicate of a categorical proposition (q.v.), or statement. Conversion yields an equivalent proposition (and is hence a valid inference) in general only with so-called E and I propositions (universal negatives and particular affirmatives). For example, the converse of the E proposition “No men are immortal” is “No immortals are men” and that of the I proposition “Some man is mortal” is “Some mortal is man.”In mathematics the term converse is used for the proposition obtained by the transformation of AB implies C into AC implies B, rendered symbolically as AB ⊃ C into AC ⊃ B. This operation may in some instances be reduced to the simple converse of an A proposition (universal affirmative) in the sense of traditional logic—for example: “Every equilateral triangle is equiangular,” and, conversely, “Every equiangular triangle is equilateral.” But such a reduction often becomes either impossible or very artificial. In this sense of conversion, the passage from a proposition to its converse is not, in general, a valid inference; and though often a mathematical proposition and its converse may both hold, separate proofs must be given for each case.* * *
Universalium. 2010.