Other forms: doctrines
A doctrine is a set of beliefs that an organisation teaches as true and expects its members to accept. A church has doctrine on what happens at a baptism; a party has doctrine on how much the state should tax.
It travels well beyond religion. Governments and armies have doctrine too: the Monroe Doctrine, a defence doctrine, the doctrine of free trade. In law, a doctrine is an established principle that judges apply, such as the doctrine of precedent. It takes OF when you name one: the doctrine of original sin. Doctrine is uncountable when you mean a whole body of teaching, countable when you point at a single one. Watch the two adjectives, because they are not the same: doctrinal simply means to do with doctrine, while doctrinaire is an insult, describing someone who applies theory rigidly no matter what happens in front of them.
1noundoctrineA set of beliefs taught by a church, party or other body as authoritative.~29%
“The council spent three days arguing over a single point of doctrine.”
2nounstatedA stated principle of government or military policy.~28%
“The general refused to depart from established military doctrine.”
3nounlawAn established principle of law that courts apply.~43%
“The whole case turned on the doctrine of precedent.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 23 sentences found in the wild and placed 21 of them on a sense (2 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
doctrine is a body of teaching.
Doctrine comes from Latin doctrina, meaning teaching, instruction or learning, which was built on doctor, a teacher, from docere, to teach. The root behind all of it is Proto-Indo-European deḱ-. The doctor in the word is not a physician at all: he is the man at the front of the room, and doctrine is what he taught.
Proto-Indo-European
*deḱ-
Latin
doctrina — teaching, instruction, learning, knowledge
English, today
doctrine
Built from
From Middle English -, from Old French -, from Latin doctrina (“teaching, instruction, learning, knowledge”), from doctor (“a teacher”), from docere (“to teach”); see doctor.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA