Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The theory and methodology of interpretation, especially of scriptural text.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The art or science of interpretation or exegesis; also, the study of or instruction in the principles of exegesis: as, a professor of hermeneutics.
Wiktionary
- n. The study or theory of the methodical interpretation of text, especially holy texts.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. The science of interpretation and explanation; exegesis; esp., that branch of theology which defines the laws whereby the meaning of the Scriptures is to be ascertained.
WordNet 3.0
- n. the branch of theology that deals with principles of exegesis
Examples
“The term hermeneutics, a Latinized version of the Greek hermeneutice, has been part of common language from the beginning of the 17th century.”
“Possessed by madness and in hermeneutics overdrive, he will decipher this bit of the built environment.”
“This is what fancy theorists call a hermeneutics of belief.”
“It spends a great deal of its time fretting about interpretation, or what it prefers to call hermeneutics, as in Hermes, the most elusive of the Greek gods, the very icon of instability and movement, of zooming out of focus and into enigmatic strangeness, with riddling messages under his wing.”
“One the one hand, Gadamer stalwartly defends the autonomy of the art work and, on the other, despite his resistance to any subsumption of art within philosophy, he insists nevertheless that aesthetics should be absorbed within hermeneutics, which is for the most part understood as a theoretical enterprise.”
“In paranoid schizophrenia, for example, patients tend to interpret what other people say with what might be called a hermeneutics of fear and suspicion, and in extreme cases, will have elaborate and fixed fantastic theories about ways in which others are aiming to harm them.”
“Meier's contribution to hermeneutics is to argue for the interdependence of hermeneutics and language, introducing a semantic holism in which linguistic obscurities are detangled by reference to language itself, not by reference to extra-linguistic elements such as the intention of the author.”
“Marxist critics often practice what is known as the hermeneutics of suspicion - that is, they question the motives of authors and seek to explain why some would ever choose to support capitalism.”
“The aforementioned volume, consequently, criticizes the conciliar "hermeneutics" of men who are certainly not "closed" toward Vatican II or opposed to it, such as Jedin, Kasper, Ratzinger, and Poulat himself.”
A Timely Re-Read on a Critique of a Particular, and Popular, Hermeneutic of Vatican II
“Otherwise, I wonder if mind-wrought signs and symbols don't require a different kind of hermeneutics than the signs of natural phenomena.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘hermeneutics’.
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Postscripture ✞
Terms associated with the Christianity, The Bible, etc. I have a related, but more narrow list called Imbible Code.
A related list is Words Associated With Jesus.apostole, pharaoh, sodom, babel, sabbath, baptize, cherub, elohim, lapsarian, crucifixion, nephilim, hosanna and 195 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 2046 more...
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January 2012
bloviate, pastiche, apparat, facile, paroxysm, pique, bedfellow, pedigree, tutelage, protege, protégé, retroactive and 196 more...
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fancy essay words
hiatus, ontology, exegesis, hermeneutics, dialectics, demiurge, ascertain, contention, eschatological, synecdoche, centripetal, centrifugal and 96 more...
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Philosophic , etymology
every major discipline has uniquely developed esoteric nomenclature to facilitate interdisciplinary dissemination
quale , qualia, elegy, tacet, lexicon, annunciate, caste, eros, contrive, purlicue, irony, venacular, dilapidate and 567 more...
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Words About Words
code-switching, amphiboly, hermeneutics, echolalia, boustrophedon, logorrhea, trope, harangue, shibboleth, rhotic, susurrous, metonymy and 6 more...
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Grammar, language, linguistics, rhetoric
backronym, Logogriph, logodaedaly, Acrostic, tmesis, pleonasm, sesquipedality, periphrasis, peroration, solecism, longueur, periphrastic and 15 more...
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Pretentious Christianese
"Religious" words that make you sound like a pretentious jerk no matter how appropriate their application. Essentially any word you can use as an excuse not to actually have a real conversation. =)
christophany, hermeneutics, exegesis, exegete, theophany, epistle, bibliology, sola scriptura, exposition, apocalyptic, apocrypha, transubstantiation and 25 more...
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Remember Not To Forget
Sephardic, Umwelt, amphiboly, untrammeled, sequela, pandiculation, tensegrity, syncretism, pugilism, shemagh, disquisition, perspicacity and 65 more...
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Specificity
Words that have with subtly different meanings from other words.
vestibule, commoditize, commodify, monetize, corroborate, mezzanine, apposite, irony, calefacient, maxim, pandiculate, rarefaction and 40 more...
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known words
words wot i already knew
antisyzygy, calenture, shill, saudade, sehnsucht, squonk, steganographic, anomie, wiggy, grok, hermeneutics, agrise and 206 more...
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addendumb's Words
fey, cockshut, redact, beatific, melange, arcanum, rarefied, dissemble, capitulation, detritus, ennui, anodyne and 381 more...
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exlotuseater's Words
autocthonous, anacoluthon, benthic, bactrian, caryatid, chiastic, dryad, dromedary, effulgent, elixir, fricative, fungible and 145 more...
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AbraxasZugzwang's Words
atavism, abraxas, sisyphean, frust, fetus-in-fetu, arhythmically, queef, epidemiology, abecedarian, troglodyte, chiaroscuro, philology and 631 more...
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artoparts's Words
illation, finite, edify, abide, abrade, vouch, amiss, vociferate, perusing, techantiquery, rigamarole, holon and 615 more...
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kewpid's Words
moleskine, araldite, dessicate, cellar door, grotesque, fallacy, vendetta, raindrop, panacea, ethereal, hircus, treppenwitz and 446 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for hermeneutics.

kitchsbest Is "hermeneut" a legitimate form of this word? (as in "interpreter"?)
Kitchsbest Dec 2, 2008
artoparts The word 'hermeneutics' is a term derived from the Greek word for interpreter. This is related to the name of the Greek god Hermes in his role as interpreter of messages, from the gods. Sep 17, 2008