discrimina

Noun

discrimen (plural discrimina or discrimens)

1. A visible dividing line where two structures come together.
   • Except for the coxal socket, the most constant landmarks of the subcoxal region are the midventral discrimen, resulting from the meeting of opposite subcoxae whose contiguous margins have been infolded posteriorly to form the sternal apophyses, and the pleural suture extending from the dorsal...1944, Charles Duncan Michener, Comparative external morphology, phylogeny, and a classification of the bees (Hymenoptera), page 173
2. A distinction, particularity, or distinguishing feature.
   • We admit Nothing to exist; Nothing is an intelligible distinction; we talk of thinking Nothing and of perceiving Nothing: in other words, Nothing is the abstraction from every discrimen or particularity. But an abstraction from every discrimen, does not involve the destruction of every or any...1865, James Hutchison Stirling, The Secret of Hegel
3. A crisis or turning point; A situation that changes how the future will unfold.
   • But civil war creates as many boundaries as it destroys: its keynote is division, and it is itself a discrimen.1992, Jamie Masters, Poetry and Civil War in Lucan's Bellum Civile, →ISBN, page 64
4. A pattern or organizing principle that forms the basis of moral judgements.
   • Some years ago James Gustafson advanced the thesis that any comprehensive and systematic account of theological ethics must have a central "discrimen" - an organizing perspective, principle, metaphor or analogy around which it is structured. That discrimen must relate in a coherent fashion four...1995, James B. Tubbs Jr, Christian Theology and Medical Ethics: Four Contemporary Approaches, →ISBN