Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Of or relating to the aspect of the Socratic method that induces a respondent to formulate latent concepts through a dialectic or logical sequence of questions.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Serving to assist or facilitate childbirth; hence, in the Socratic method (see II.) aiding in bringing forth, in a metaphorical sense; serving to educe or elicit.
- n. The art of midwifery: applied by Socrates to the method he pursued in investigating and imparting truth; intellectual midwifery. It consisted in eliciting from a person interrogated such answers as lead by successive stages to the conclusion desired by the interrogator.
Wiktionary
- adj. maieutical
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Serving to assist childbirth.
- adj. Aiding, or tending to, the definition and interpretation of thoughts or language.
Etymologies
- Greek maieutikos, from maieuesthai, to act as midwife, from maia, midwife, nurse; see mā-2 in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“It is upon the evidence of this fact, indeed, that the admirable pedagogical method, known as maieutic, is founded.”
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 7: Gregory XII-Infallability
“These were embryonate in the womb of reason, coming to the birth, but needing the "maieutic" or "obstetric" art, that they might be brought forth. [”
“In maieutic fiction, the protagonist is faced with a problem that requires a reflective reevaluation of self, with resolution achieved not by action but by realisation, in an epiphany that is not gnosis but rather logos.”
“The ultimate end-point of this, on one side of the dialectic, is maieutic fiction. posted by Hal Duncan | 9: 43 PM”
“At least the naivety of those “genre” novels has been put in its place; these pretend to be proper books, with complex approaches to trauma, even as in their use of the strange and the diegetic they seek to infiltrate and undermine the literary order — which is to say the self-sustaining absolutes, the “what is, is” of maieutic miserablism.”
“As I say, I include reflective realism in this as the mimesis of mind, and place maieutic fiction as a logical end-point of that.”
“Which is to say, how maieutic reflectiveness is literonormative.”
“Is the maieutic approach really dominant, or is it just one of many now?”
“That maieutic reflectiveness is no more literanormative than a pottery hobby would be heteronormative because a few firemen like making clay ashtrays in between being all masculine.”
“The method is, in one of his favorite words, maieutic, from the Greek term for midwifery, like that of his beloved model Socrates, who in his questioning style sought to elicit his auditors 'ideas rather than impose his own.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘maieutic’.
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G[r]eek
A collection of words found in English that are either purely Greek or have Greek etymology.
Please add with caution and certainty. Will be regularly updated by me.etymology, philosophy, laconic, disharmony, patriarchic, archaic, phlogiston, aether, aeon, angel, arachnid, rhythm and 346 more...
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My . . . uh . . .
maija, maya, maia, mia, mya, maieutics, maja, miya, mialuthien, miah, maya deren, maya lin and 178 more...
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phrontistery - m
from phrontistery.info
mabble, mabsoot, macadamize, macarism, macarize, macaronic, macerate, macerator, machair, machairodont, machicolation, machinule and 898 more...
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250 Spelling Words
A selected sampling of words for intermediate and advanced spellers.
orecchiette, rhabdomancy, guayabera, orthoepy, opisthenar, maguey, proem, ciabatta, cioppino, banns, concinnity, asthenia and 237 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Hence
Words with definitions that have a "hence" in them.
hanger, Deet, tripe, spindlelegs, fiddle, store, pluck, snap, villain, link, comedy, particular and 410 more...
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Lyngwistix
semantic, semiotic, linguistic, etc.
lexeme, sonorant, prosody, monophthong, portmanteau, dithyramb, inflection, deixis, mondegreen, screed, persiflage, polysemy and 42 more...
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New Words
No definite conception of these words.
reggaeton, fugacious, astray, artillery, quietism, heteronomy, plebeian, remit, hypostasize, discountenance, rictus, wail and 60 more...
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Words with Four Consecutive Vowels
This oughta be a short list, eh?
queue, queuing, homoiousian, miaou, onomatopoeia, hawaiian, iroquoian, kauai, kilauea, longueuil, louie, montesquieu and 58 more...
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Recently Loved Words
Valentine's Day is coming up, so here's a list of words that have been "loved" here on Wordnik (our favorite site with a heart as part of its logo).
howl, lichenous, uncomplicated, siliceous, clatter, hubris, dervish, articulated, acerbic, Recently Loved Words, mellifluous, anomaly and 45 more...
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four vowels in a row
aqueous, nonaqueous, subaqueous, terraqueous, hawaiian, obsequious, onomatopoeia, pharmacopoeia, queue, queuer, miaou, sequoia and 24 more...
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juv3nal's Words
ligature, hermeneutic, caduceus, prelapsarian, apophenia, pataphor, lipogram, epinephrine, ludic, samizdat, oulipo, oulipopo and 194 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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Just 'cause I like 'em, M
metamerism, malady, margin, marauder, maverick, mercury, mirth, mandible, macerate, meteor, manumission, mica and 292 more...
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epeolatrist's list
epeolatry, syzygy, sphallolalia, lucubration, lugubrious, cacology, mellifluous, tmesis, synecdoche, anathema, eschatological, razbliuto and 349 more...
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What David Foster Wallace circled in ...
ablative, ablaut, abulia, acephalous, ACTH, adit, adumbrate, agrapha, ailanthus, aleatory, alfresco, algolagnia and 474 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for maieutic.
knitandpurl "I didn't feel qualified, but I accepted and we began to work, proceeding by a Socratic, maieutic method – which is something I'm rather good at."
The Patagonian Hare by Claude Lanzmann, p 191 of the Farrar, Straus and Giroux hardcover edition Apr 15, 2013
Telofy I think that perhaps bneenan84 is distinguishing between an objective and a subjective reality, so that when (s)he says "this website" (s)he's acknowledging its existence within this subjective reality while its existence in the objective reality remains doubtful. "I believe this website does not exist" would then either mean that the objective existence of a subjectively perceived website is doubted or simply that (s)he would believe "such a website" to be inexistent within whichever reality, referring to some kind of perhaps unlikely notion.
Please excuse possible inaccuracies, I'm currently in a lecture. Dec 15, 2008
sionnach I believe mangoes where nobody has gone before. Dec 14, 2008
bilby I believe mangoes exist, I saw one at the market this morning. Dec 14, 2008
garyth123 if this website didn't exist it would be necessary to invent it. Dec 14, 2008
vanishedone If 'this website' doesn't exist, doesn't it follow that the words 'this website' don't refer to anything, and hence that the belief renders itself meaningless? Dec 13, 2008
Prolagus Which website? Dec 13, 2008
bneenan84 i can't believe this website exists. Dec 13, 2008
Prolagus See also μαιε�?ω. Oct 15, 2008
frindley Maieutic is one of my favourite obscure words. It means pertaining to intellectual midwifery and describes as no other word does a phenomenon that happens more often than you might think. It is very rewarding when you can match the moment to the word.
(Martin Ackland, London) Oct 15, 2008