Adjective

If Orbitz prevails, its online reservation process alone may blow away the competition. Unlike mainframe-based systems … , Orbitz uses racks of PCs to search fare data, making it easier to scale up computing power. And its intelligent … algorithms evaluate all the possible fares simultaneously instead of employing heuristic shortcuts designed to use as little computing power as possible. — Evan Ratliff , WIRED ,

Because "tradition" has served as a powerful heuristic term, we are always in danger of reifying it … — Henry Louis Gates, Jr. , Reading Black, Reading Feminist ,

Its heuristic principle would be St. Augustine's axiom that the Old Testament is revealed in the New and the New concealed in the Old … — V. B. Leitch , American Literary Criticism from the Thirties to the Eighties ,

Noun

"Cult" is best understood not as a descriptor, but as a command, like a law officer's "Halt!" Its purpose is to stop and contain. A more useful heuristic would be to identify precisely the most disturbing practices, beliefs, or incidents in the world of a "cult" … — Robert A. Orsi , Commonweal ,