The Word of the Day podcast for April 20th.
Today's word is indoctrinate, spelled I-N-D-O-C-T-R-I-N-A-T-E.
Indoctrinate is a verb.
To indoctrinate someone is to teach them to fully accept the ideas,
opinions, and beliefs of a particular group while categorically rejecting other ideas, opinions, and beliefs.
Here's the word used in a sentence from The New Yorker by Katie Waldman.
They worry about being cut off from poetry, particularly by the jobs that they need to sustain their daily lives,
and that they fear may quietly indoctrinate them into a contrary value system.
The word indoctrinate means brainwash in most contexts today, but its meaning wasn't always so negative.
When the verb first appeared in English in the 17th century,
it simply meant to teach, a meaning linked closely to its source, the Latin verb docere, which also means to teach.
Other offspring of docere include docile, doctor, document, and of course doctrine.
By the 19th century, Indoctrinate was being used in the sense of teaching someone to fully accept only the ideas,
opinions, and beliefs of a particular group.
With your Word of the Day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.
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