indoctrinate
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day
Merriam-Webster
4.5 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 20 April 2026
⏱️ 2 minutes
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Summary
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 20, 2026 is:
indoctrinate • \in-DAHK-truh-nayt\ • verb
To indoctrinate someone is to teach them to fully accept the ideas, opinions, and beliefs of a particular group while categorically rejecting other ideas, opinions, and beliefs.
// The video series attempts to indoctrinate younger audiences with ahistorical and unscientific ideas.
Examples:
"They worry about being 'cut off' from poetry, particularly by the jobs that they need to sustain their daily lives and that they fear may quietly indoctrinate them into a contrary value system." — Katy Waldman, The New Yorker, 2 Feb. 2026
Did you know?
Indoctrinate means "brainwash" in most contexts today, but its meaning wasn't always so negative. When the verb first appeared in English in the 17th century, it simply meant "to teach"—a meaning linked closely to its source, the Latin verb docēre, which also means "to teach." (Other offspring of docēre include docile, doctor, document, and, of course, doctrine). By the 19th century, indoctrinate was being used in the sense of teaching someone to fully accept only the ideas, opinions, and beliefs of a particular group.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's the Word of the Day podcast for April 20th. |
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| 0:39.6 | You're built to win it. Today's word is indoctrinate, spelled I-N-D-O-C-T-R-I-N-A-T-E. Indoctrinate is a verb. |
| 0:52.4 | To indoctrinate someone is to teach them to fully accept the ideas, |
| 0:56.3 | opinions, and beliefs of a particular group, while categorically rejecting other ideas, |
| 1:02.2 | opinions, and beliefs. Here's the word used in a sentence from the New Yorker by Katie Waldman. |
| 1:07.8 | They worry about being cut off from poetry, particularly by the jobs that they need to sustain their daily lives, and that they fear may quietly indoctrinate them into a contrary value system. |
| 1:20.6 | The word indoctrinate means brainwash, in most contexts today, but its meaning wasn't always so negative. When the verb |
| 1:30.0 | first appeared in English in the 17th century, it simply meant to teach, a meaning |
| 1:35.0 | linked closely to its source, the Latin verb docare, which also means to teach. Other |
| 1:41.0 | offspring of docaree include docile, doctor, document, and of course doctrine. |
| 1:47.1 | By the 19th century, indoctrinate was being used in the sense of teaching someone to |
| 1:52.0 | fully accept only the ideas, opinions, and beliefs of a particular group. With your word of the |
| 1:58.5 | day, I'm Peter Sokolowski. |
| 2:03.6 | Visit Miriam Webbster.com today for definitions, wordplay, and trending word lookups. |
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