indoctrinate

English

Etymology

From in- +‎ doctrine +‎ -ate (verb-forming suffix). Compare French endoctriner.

Pronunciation

• Audio (Southern England):

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Verb

indoctrinate (third-person singular simple present indoctrinates, present participle indoctrinating, simple past and past participle indoctrinated)

1. To teach (a person) with a biased, one-sided or uncritical ideology; to brainwash.
2. To teach and instill (something, to a person) in a biased, one-sided way.
   • 1987, Asian Outlook:

     [...] it was beyond their hope to indoctrinate Marxism-Leninism-Mao's "thought" into the mind of young generation. The young generation does not care about Communism.

   • 2002, Asian Anthropology:

     [They] attempt to further indoctrinate Christian values into local communities by first distorting the substance of the traditional rituals and then imputing another set of values to them.

   • 2017 November 13, Ros Stuart-Buttle, John Shortt, Christian Faith, Formation and Education, Springer, →ISBN, page 119:

     She […] felt uncomfortable that she was to her mind 'pushing Christian values'. Apparently lurking beneath her discomfort was a sense that she was required to indoctrinate Christian values in a search for conformity rather than teaching to promote autonomy, which she regarded as her professional commitment.

   • 2024 November 29, Reggie Legend, On My Post: Recollections of a Social Media Maverick: VOLUME II, Reggie Kee d.b.a. Reggie Legend, →ISBN, page 98:

     Further still, there were other little boys and girls whose parents DID know about the history [of the show promoting racism] who may have surely taken the time to infuse and indoctrinate it into the next generation.

3. (obsolete) To teach; to instruct.

Derived terms

• counterindoctrinate
• indoctrinable
• indoctrinatee
• indoctrination
• indoctrinator
• indoctrinatory
• indoctrinee
• misindoctrinate
• reindoctrinate
• unindoctrinated

Related terms

• docent
• docile
• doctor
• doctorate
• doctrinaire
• doctrinal
• doctrine
• document

Translations

teach with a biased or one-sided ideology

Catalan: adoctrinar (ca) Chinese: Mandarin: (to impart; to instill) 向……灌輸 / 向……灌输 (xiàng... guànshū), (to brainwash) 洗腦 / 洗脑 (zh) (xǐnǎo) Czech: indoktrinovat Dutch: indoctrineren (nl) Finnish: indoktrinoida, aivopestä (fi) French: endoctriner (fr) Galician: adoutrinar German: indoktrinieren (de) Italian: addottrinare (it) Latin: addoctrino, indoctrino Polish: indoktrynować (pl) Portuguese: doutrinar (pt), endoutrinar Romanian: îndoctrina (ro) Spanish: adoctrinar (es) Swedish: indoktrinera (sv)

teach — see teach

Further reading

• “indoctrinate”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “indoctrinate”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.