Message-ID: <18621457.1075846821902.JavaMail.evans@thyme>
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2000 17:26:00 -0700 (PDT)
From: wsmith@wordsmith.org
To: linguaphile@wordsmith.org
Subject: A.Word.A.Day--didactic
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-From: Wordsmith <wsmith@wordsmith.org>
X-To: linguaphile@wordsmith.org
X-cc: 
X-bcc: 
X-Folder: \Susan_Scott_Dec2000_June2001_2\Notes Folders\Wordsmith
X-Origin: SCOTT-S
X-FileName: sscott5.nsf

didactic (dy-DAK-tik) also didactical (-ti-kal) adjective

   1. Intended to instruct.

   2. Morally instructive.

   3. Inclined to teach or moralize excessively.

   4. didactics, (used with a singular verb) the art or science of teaching.

[Greek didaktikos, skillful in teaching, from didaktos, taught, from
didaskein, didak-, to teach, educate.]

   "Tt might be argued that literature has only very rarely represented
   character. Even the greatest novelists, such as Dostoevsky and Tolstoy,
   resort to stock caricature, didactic speaking over characters, repetitive
   leitmotifs, and so on. The truly unhostaged writer, such as Chekhov, is
   rare."
   James Wood, Human, all too inhuman, New Republic, Jul 24, 2000.

This week's theme: words from the world of learning and the learned.

.............................................................................
Never look down on anybody unless you're helping him up. -Jesse Louis Jackson

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "Language is a city to the building of which
every human being brought a stone." Invite your friends and family to join
in the quest by sending a gift subscription of A.Word.A.Day. It is free!
http://wordsmith.org/awad/gift.html

Pronunciation:
http://wordsmith.org/words/didactic.wav
http://wordsmith.org/words/didactic.ram