ascertainment

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)The act of ascertaining.

   “the ascertainment of facts”

   “You have a great Worke to doe, to restore Religion and Law, upon which depends the Kings re-enthronement, and re-investure with his just rights, the Parliaments ascertainment of their just power and equall Priviledges, and the peoples restorement to their known Liberties and Properties […]”

   “[…] Mr. Pope himself appears to me […] now and then to have imagin’d Proprieties, or cover’d Defects with a seeming View rather to the Honour of his Author at all Events, than to the precise Ascertainment of Truth.”

   “[…] I judged it proper that there should be an exact ascertainment of my legal rights by the decree of a court of justice,”

   “[…] does not science tell us that its highest striving is after the ascertainment of a unity which shall bind the smallest things with the greatest?”