Doctrine

How to spell doctrine

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce doctrine

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does doctrine mean?

1. nounA set of principles or beliefs, especially one taught and upheld by a religion, political group, or area of study.

Doctrine in a sentence

• The church has held that doctrine for centuries.

• Military planners revised the country's defence doctrine after the conflict.

Where does doctrine come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word descends from the Latin doctrina, which meant 'teaching', 'instruction', or 'a body of knowledge handed down'. That noun was built on doctor, an agent noun for a teacher, which in turn comes from the verb docere, meaning 'to teach' or 'to cause someone to know'. English took the word in the 1300s through Old French doctrine, where it already carried the sense of an established set of religious or philosophical teachings. The same docere root sits behind the familiar words 'doctor' (originally a learned teacher, not a physician) and 'document', so a doctrine is literally something that has been taught and set down. The spelling trap is the unstressed ending, which sounds like a vague 'trin' but is written -trine, preserving the old Latin -trina.

How the word is built

• doc- (from Latin docere: to teach)
• -trine (from -trina: a body of teaching)