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''dictum'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260320113731-00-⌔

dictum - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

dictum (plural dicta or dictums)

• An authoritative statement; a dogmatic saying; a maxim, an apothegm.
  • ✤ This should not surprise us who know that van Gogh wrote: ‘To paint and to love women is incompatible’; van Gogh was right for himself, which does not mean that he was right for everybody, and I will not draw from his dictum the probably incorrect conclusion that ‘To paint and to love literature is incompatible.’¹
  • ✤ […] a dictum which he had heard an economics professor once propound […]²
  • ✤ 1. The utmost in steam producing capacity permitted by weight and dimensions; in other words, capacity to boil water—H. A. Ivatt’s old dictum.³
  • ✤ But this is not the philosophical revolution of which I speak. What Warhol’s dictum amounted to was that you cannot tell when something is a work of art just by looking at it, for there is no particular way that art has to look.⁴
• A judicial opinion expressed by judges on points that do not necessarily arise in the case, and are not involved in it.
• The report of a judgment made by one of the judges who has given it.
• An arbitrament or award.

Etymology

From Latin dictum (“proverb, maxim”), from dictus (“having been said”), perfect passive participle of dico (“to say”). Compare Spanish dicho (“saying”). Doublet of dict.

Pronunciation

• (UK, US) IPA: /ˈdɪk.təm/
• Audio (Southern England): 🔊
• Rhymes: -ɪktəm

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

1. 1918, Walter Lionel George, A Novelist on Novels ‎${}^{[1]}$: ↩

2. 1949, Bruce Kiskaddon, George R. Stewart, Earth Abides: ↩

3. 1951 July, “British Standard Locomotives”, in Railway Magazine, page 438: ↩

4. 1992, Arthur Coleman Danto, Beyond the Brillo Box, University of California Press, →ISBN, page 5: ↩

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