didactic
See also: didàctic
English
WOTD – 26 April 2010
Alternative forms
- didactick (obsolete)
Etymology
From French didactique, from Ancient Greek διδακτικός (didaktikós, “skilled in teaching”), from διδακτός (didaktós, “taught, learnt”), from διδάσκω (didáskō, “to teach, educate”). By surface analysis, didact + -ic.
Pronunciation
- enPR: dī-dăkˈtĭk, IPA(key): /daɪˈdæk.tɪk/, /dɪˈdæk.tɪk/
Audio (Australia): (file) Audio (US): (file) - Rhymes: -æktɪk
- Hyphenation: di‧dac‧tic
Adjective
didactic (comparative more didactic, superlative most didactic)
- Instructive or intended to teach or demonstrate, especially with regard to morality.
- Synonyms: educative, instructive
- didactic poetry
- 1837, Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution: A History […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Chapman and Hall, →OCLC, (please specify the book or page number):
- Falling Bastilles, Insurrections of Women, thousands of smoking Manorhouses, a country bristling with no crop but that of Sansculottic steel: these were tolerably didactic lessons; but them [the Nobility] they have not taught.
- 1856 February, [Thomas Babington] Macaulay, “Oliver Goldsmith”, in T[homas] F[lower] E[llis], editor, The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, new edition, London: Longman, Green, Reader, & Dyer, published 1871, →OCLC:
- The finest didactic poem in any language.
- 1984 February 8, Joseph F. Kess, Anita M. Copeland, “The Structure and Function of Nootkan Baby Talk”, in Working Papers of the Linguistics Circle of the University of Victoria, volume 4, number 1, →ISSN, page 10:
- The real question seems to be whether baby talk does fulfill didactic functions in addition to the obvious affective function which it apparently serves more for adults than for children.
- Excessively moralizing.
- 2015 May 21, George Will, “The withering of the death penalty”, in Daily Camera[1], archived from the original on 26 April 2025, sourced from The Washington Post:
- There has not been one in America since 1937 (a hanging in Galena, Missouri) because society has decided that state-inflicted deaths, far from being wholesomely didactic spectacles, are coarsening and revolting.
- (medicine) Teaching from textbooks rather than laboratory demonstration and clinical application.
Derived terms
Translations
instructive or intended to teach or demonstrate
|
excessively moralizing
teaching from textbooks rather than laboratory demonstration and application
Noun
didactic (plural didactics)
Translations
treatise on teaching
Romanian
Etymology
Borrowed from French didactique.
Adjective
didactic m or n (feminine singular didactică, masculine plural didactici, feminine/neuter plural didactice)
Declension
| singular | plural | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| masculine | neuter | feminine | masculine | neuter | feminine | ||
| nominative- accusative |
indefinite | didactic | didactică | didactici | didactice | ||
| definite | didacticul | didactica | didacticii | didacticele | |||
| genitive- dative |
indefinite | didactic | didactice | didactici | didactice | ||
| definite | didacticului | didacticei | didacticilor | didacticelor | |||
Categories:
- English terms derived from French
- English terms derived from Ancient Greek
- English terms suffixed with -ic
- English 3-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio pronunciation
- Rhymes:English/æktɪk
- Rhymes:English/æktɪk/3 syllables
- English lemmas
- English adjectives
- English terms with usage examples
- English terms with quotations
- en:Medicine
- English nouns
- English countable nouns
- English terms with archaic senses
- Romanian terms borrowed from French
- Romanian terms derived from French
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- Romanian adjectives