Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Intended to instruct.
- adj. Morally instructive.
- adj. Inclined to teach or moralize excessively.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Fitted or intended for instruction; containing doctrines, precepts, principles, or rules; instructive; expository; edifying: as, a didactic treatise; didactic poetry.
- Pertaining to instruction; of an edifying quality, character, or manner; used in or given to exposition: as, a didactic style; didactic methods; a didactic lecturer.
- n. A treatise on education.
Wiktionary
- adj. Instructive or intended to teach or demonstrate, especially with regard to morality. (I.e., didactic poetry)
- adj. Excessively moralizing.
- adj. medicine Teaching from textbooks rather than laboratory demonstration and clinical application.
- n. archaic A treatise on teaching or education.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Fitted or intended to teach; conveying instruction; preceptive; instructive; teaching some moral lesson.
- adj. Pejorative excessively prone to instruct, even those who do not wish to be instructed; -- of people.
- n. obsolete A treatise on teaching or education.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. instructive (especially excessively)
Etymologies
- From Ancient Greek διδακτικός (didaktikos, "skilled in teaching"), from διδακτός (didaktos, "taught, learnt"), from διδάσκω (didaskō, "I teach, educate") (Wiktionary)
- Greek didaktikos, skillful in teaching, from didaktos, taught, from didaskein, didak-, to teach, educate. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“7:12: Sends text to Brian Williams of NBC News correcting him on improper use of the term "didactic.”
The Washington Post: National, World & D.C. Area News and Headlines - The Washington Post
“The degree to which the characters are bound to their milieu is made apparent at every turn — sometimes, in didactic bits of dialogue, almost too apparent.”
“Teens are such an open audience, and the world of YA literature has evolved in the past years, so the age of thinking about teen novels as needing to be limited or didactic is definitely over.”
Writer Unboxed » Blog Archive » AUTHOR INTERVIEW: K.L. Going, part 1
“In this long Latin didactic poem, the epic poet Lucretius sought to free humans from the fear of death by explaining the true nature of things.”
“I have no interest in didactic book, whatever its viewpoint.”
“I don't know if you're at all interested in American didactic fiction.”
“His work, though far from didactic, is full of moral implications; his example of aesthetic idealism, set by abnegation and artistry is a standing rebuke to facility and venality, callousness and obtuseness.”
“To say this, is not, of course, to say that the Greek conception of art was didactic; for the word didactic, when applied to art, has usually the implication that the excellence of the moral is the only point to be considered, and that if that is good the work itself must be good.”
“Psalm, though more than usually didactic, is made the medium of both parts of devotion -- prayer and praise.”
“Government handles the public using the "need to know" concept that is often called didactic teaching, but is best described as cognitive control: what BF Skinner described in his book”
OpEdNews - OpEdNews.Com Progressive, Tough Liberal News and Opinion
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘didactic’.
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Test Prep or Just for fun
Building a list for standardized test prep or just for learning some new words! Please add any words that you feel are important for the SAT/GRE/GMAT etc...
throng, morass, parley, facile, kismet, strife, jetsam, carrion, annex, harbinger, vestige, surreptitious and 575 more...
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gre
municipal, whit, dissembler, berate, liberally, embellish, dissimilitude, histrionics, flamboyance, bombastic, bovine, calumny and 142 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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GRE 2014
abase, abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
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Words build meanings from origins( et...
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 2053 more...
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The Spoken Word
Words relating to Conversation
adage, adamant, brusque, candor, cavil, compelling, didactic, disparage, emphatic, facetious, frank, fulminate and 7 more...
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Vocabulary
shibboleth, verboten, jejune, ostensible, multifarious, quintessence, purportedly, tangential, vacillate, quagmire, wanton, onerous and 74 more...
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GRE
GRE words from Princeton Review guide, ETS GRE Book from 2010 (for revised test), New Yorker/NY Times articles.
sycophant, obsequious, volubility, equanimity, enervate, effrontery, impertinent, platitude, impudence, quiescent, propitiate, equivocate and 124 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
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Garbiage
word trash
parapluie, brobdingnagian, plié, segue, laconic, pastoral, phthisis, belly, synecdoche, apotheosis, sepulchral, mollification and 40 more...
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Infinite Jest
starting from i dont know the 4th or 5th chapter called 'year of the depend adult undergarment'
petulant, agoraphobia, portcullis, fantod, coital, phylactery, imprimatur, insipid, precocious, cardioid, fenestration, inception and 9 more...
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gre2
aberrant, aberration, aboveboard, abrasive, abstemious, acme, admonish, affable, affluent, alacrity, allegory, alleviate and 1901 more...
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ash vocab
flippant, fillip, expiate, explicate, extirpate, facile, florid, fealty, allegiance, fetid, febrile, pert and 134 more...
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Words I Know
List of most of the words I've learned
garner, abase, abate, abdicate, abduct, aberration, abet, abhor, abide, abject, abjure, abnegation and 1046 more...
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GRE
abate, abdicate, aberrant, abhor, abjure, abrasive, abridge, abstain, acme, activism, adhere, admonish and 195 more...
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Useful
parkour, diegetic, callipygian, dasypygal, hypnagogic, hypnopompic, antejentacular, postprandial, perspicuity, perspicacity, föhn, traceur and 115 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for didactic.
garyth123 Re Wordia -- I don't get it;) Jan 4, 2009
mainframeguy My blog has definitions in audio, text, and even Video for this word (with cross link to the new Wordia site, which may be of interest to Wordies no doubt). Oct 18, 2008