Other forms: disciplines, disciplined, disciplining
Discipline is the firm training that teaches somebody the rules and how to keep to them. A parent who says no and means it, a bedtime that does not move, a class that goes quiet the moment the teacher stands up.
The second sense sits inside you: self-discipline is doing the run at six in the morning when nobody is watching. The third is punishment, so a soldier faces disciplinary action and a worker gets a disciplinary hearing, and the verb goes with it, since you discipline a child, a player or an employee. Then, with no warning at all, discipline also means a branch of study, which is why physics and history are called academic disciplines. That last one surprises learners, though it fits: a discipline is a body of knowledge with rules you have to learn. The adjective is disciplined for a person and disciplinary for the punishment.
1nounparentingTraining that teaches people to obey rules and control themselves.~14%
“The school is strict, but the discipline is fair and everyone knows where they stand.”
2nounselfThe ability to make yourself do what needs doing.~2%
“Writing every morning takes a discipline nobody else ever sees.”
synonyms: self-control
3nounpunishmentPunishment used to make someone follow the rules.~20%
“Two players faced discipline from the club after the match.”
4nounfieldA branch of learning or a field of study.~62%
“Anthropology borrows its methods from several other disciplines.”
5verbpunishTo punish or correct someone in order to change their behaviour.~2%
“The company disciplined three managers over the missing money.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 14 sentences found in the wild and placed 14 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
discipline is a form of training.
Discipline came through Old French descipline from Latin disciplina, instruction, which was built on discipulus, a pupil, the same word that gives us disciple. The Latin verb for learning pulled it along. Underneath is a Proto-Indo-European root dek-, to accept, learning seen as taking something in. The word we now use for punishing a child started as the word for teaching one.
Proto-Indo-European
*dek- — (cause to) accept
Latin
disciplina — instruction
Old French
descipline
English, today
discipline
Built from
From Middle English, from Anglo-Norman -, from Old French descipline, from Latin disciplina (“instruction”), from discipulus (“pupil”), influenced by disco (“to learn”), from Proto-Indo-European dek- (“(cause to) accept”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA