Word.ws English Dictionary

dicta

/ˈdɪk.tə/

dicta is the plural of dictum.

Meaning of dictum

Noun

dictum (plural dicta or dictums)

  1. 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...1918, Walter Lionel George, A Novelist on Novels
  2. A judicial opinion expressed by judges on points that do not necessarily arise in the case, and are not involved in it.
  3. The report of a judgment made by one of the judges who has given it.
  4. An arbitrament or award.

Forms of dicta

alternative formdictums

Phrases with dicta

Questions about dicta

What is dicta the plural of?
Dicta is the plural of dictum.
How do you pronounce dicta?
Dicta is pronounced /ˈdɪk.tə/.

Words near dicta in the dictionary

  1. dicrurid
  2. dicrurids
  3. DICs
  4. dict
  5. dict.
  6. dicta
  7. dictablanda
  8. dictablandas
  9. dictagraph
  10. dictagraphs
  11. dictamen

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dicta (page history and authors); dictum (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “dicta.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dicta. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.