Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Necessarily or demonstrably true; incontrovertible.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Demonstrative; incontestable because demonstrated or demonstrable; of the nature of necessary proof.
  • In logic, a term descriptive of a form of judgment in which the connection of subject and predicate is asserted to be necessary; asserting its own necessity.
  • noun The logical doctrine of demonstration and of science.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Same as apodeictic.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Incontrovertible; demonstrably true or certain.
  • adjective A style of argument, in which a person presents their reasoning as categorically true, even if it is not necessarily so.
  • adjective theology absolute and without explanation, as in a command from God like "Thou shalt not kill!"

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective of a proposition; necessarily true or logically certain

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin apodīcticus, from Greek apodeiktikos, from apodeiktos, demonstrable, from apodeiknunai, to demonstrate : apo-, apo- + deiknunai, to show; see deik- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From the Latin apodīcticus ("proving clearly”, “demonstrative"), from the Ancient Greek ἀποδεικτικός (apodeiktikos, "affording proof”, “demonstrative"), from ἀποδείκνυμι (apodeiknumi, "I demonstrate").

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Examples

  • As music, I have come to believe that it is the most perfect music that exists, so much so that I encounter every new chant with apodictic certainty of eventually discovering its profundity.

    Demographics and Sacred Music 2009

  • Suppose I could construct a flawless proof, based entirely on the apodictic truths of logic, that one may torture innocent people only on pain of contradiction.

    Fukuyama in NPQ 2007

  • If AE is about apodictic certainty, then it is not a science, but a pastime.

    Austrian Economists and the mainstream, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009

  • But this much we do know with apodictic certainty: virtually nothing in Iraq has gone as the US envisioned it.

    Lew Rockwell: Iraq and Moral Corruption 2008

  • To me that is apodictic—it proves it is morally wrong.

    Fr. McNabb Speaks - Capitalism and Communism/1 2008

  • Moreover, there are certain aspects of the judgment which cannot be communicated in a statement, namely whether the judgment is evident or blind and whether it is apodictic or assertoric (Marty 1908a 289 ff.).

    Anton Marty Rollinger, Robin 2008

  • ˜Although, apart from divine revelation, there is no apodictic certainty about things that exist outside our mind, but only moral or probable and likely certainty, that is still sufficient to perform adequately and to control all the activities of human life, since nothing more is required for them apart from moral or probable truth or the certainty and likelihood of knowledge™

    Henricus Regius Clarke, Desmond 2008

  • But unique of all other religous truth claims in history, this teaching offers the first apodictic certainty.

    High stakes for religion.... 2007

  • I can think of no reason for a physician to add Avandia to a diabetic patient's treatment program in light of recent events even though we may never know with apodictic certainty if there is an increased risk of heart attack or not.

    You can tell a big thing from a little thing but a litle thing from nothing at all is really hard james gaulte 2007

  • Sometimes controversies just die out without really being settled with apodictic medical certainty.

    Archive 2007-06-01 james gaulte 2007

Comments

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  • Of course everyone added the word because they remember it from Nickelodeon's "Doug", right?

    July 12, 2007

  • I was a big fan of that show way back when, but I don't remember this word.

    July 12, 2007

  • Same here. I think of Doug everytime I see a quail. But I don't remember this word on the show.

    July 12, 2007

  • Doug finds the Critique of Pure Reason on Skeeter's bookshelf.

    "The possibility of apodictic principles..."

    April 29, 2008

  • see apodeictic

    January 2, 2009

  • JM entered the apodictic contest.

    January 10, 2011

  • "I feel more assured by the incoherent babbling of a panhandler than by the apodictic pronouncements of philosophers."

    The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 53

    September 16, 2013