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DOGMA

Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2006 10:28 pm
by Dr. Goodword
• dogma •

Pronunciation: dôg-mê • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: 1. A firmly held doctrine, belief or a body of such doctrines established by an authoritative source, as the dogma of the Catholic Church. 2. An adamantly and unreasonably held belief whether right or wrong.

Notes: Today's Good Word is the ancestor of a large derivational family, including the adjective dogmatic with its own offspring dogmatically and dogmaticality. This word has also produced a quality noun dogmatism and a personal noun dogmatist, as well as a verb dogmatize, which means "to create a dogma of some belief". Then the whole process begins all over again with two nouns, dogmatization and dogmatizer—but let's not go through the entire family album.

In Play: Dogmas as usually associated with religions: "According to Christian dogma, Christ is the Savior; according to Islamic dogma, he is a prophet." However, any firmly or irrationally held belief qualifies: "The assumption that collards are better for you than spinach was unrebuttable dogma in my family." Do we need a word for "a weakly held belief"? Would catma do? I'll leave it up to you.

Word History: Today's Good Word comes to us from Greek via Latin. In Greek it meant "opinion, belief", a noun derived from the verb dokein, "to seem, to think". This verb comes from Proto-Indo-European dok-/dek- "to take, accept", found in Latin borrowings such as doctor, doctrine, and document. Since the [m] is voiced (made by vibrating the vocal cords), the [k] would become voiced when standing against it (a process known as assimilation). When you pronounce [k] vibrating the vocal cords, the result is the [g] we hear in dogma. The dek variang underwent a similar change to produce Latin dignitas "merit, worth", which we borrowed as dignity. By the time dignitas reached French, however, it had become Old French deintie, which ended up in English as a separate word, dainty. (Today's word is the suggestion of the Alpha Agora's Palewriter.)

Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 8:55 am
by Perry
It is interesting how dainty made the transition from choice, excellent to delicately pretty.

Perry far-from-dainty Dror

Dogma

Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 9:01 pm
by Susan
I feel ashamed to add this, but it cries out to be heard: "My karma ran over your dogma."

Posted: Sat Aug 26, 2006 9:42 pm
by Perry
Don't be. It is a wonderful littly ditty.

Posted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 4:11 am
by portokalos
Sure it is a good dogma that little dotty. Try to you adapt it to reality and don’t be ashamed.

Posted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 1:01 pm
by Stargzer
Forget us not Kevin Smith's Image