Dictionary.net

Consisting, or made up, of what is chosen or selected; as, an eclectic method; an eclectic magazine.

One who follows an eclectic method.

Consisting, or made up, of what is chosen or selected; as, an eclectic method; an eclectic magazine.

One who follows an eclectic method.

Picking out from different sources what appears to be the best.

A graduate of eclecticism.

Electing or choosing out: picking out.

One who selects opinions from different systems.

ECLECTICALLY.

Selecting; choosing.

Selecting, or made by selection; broad; liberal.

One who practises selection from all systems, as in philosophy or medicine.

Selecting; choosing out and adopting from the views of others what seems good.

A philosopher who selects from various systems such opinions and principles as he judges to be sound and rational; originally one who, having no system of his own, selected from Plato and Aristotle; eventually a Platonizing Christian; in modern times, one who, recognizing an element of truth in all systems, collects a new and fuller one out of the whole.

Choosing or selecting, as opinions or doctrines.

Any philosopher in anc. times who selected his opinions and principles from various sources.

A sect of physicians, who professed to choose, from other sects, all the opinions which appeared to them best founded. Agathinns of Sparta, master of Archigenes of Apamaea, in Syria, was its re­puted founder; and Archigencs and Aretasus were its greatest ornaments. The doctrine was called Eclectism, Eclectismus, Medicina eclectica, Eclectic medicine. Every judicious physician must be an eclectic.

Pertaining to eclecticism.

In therapeutics, professing not to be governed by any general theory or system of practice, but to select from all systems that which most conforms to reason and experience; as a n., a medical practitioner who so professes. [Gr.]

n. A selector; one who forms a system in any department of knowledge by selecting from the principles, opinions, or systems of others; —applied to a sect of ancient philosophers ; to a class of ancient physicians ; and, specially, to a sect in the Christian church who combined the teaching of Plato with the doctrines of Scripture.