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dormitive virtue

dormitive virtue noun: a type of tautology in which an item is explained in terms of the item itself, only put in different (usually more abstract) words.

Noun

dormitive virtue (plural dormitive virtues)

  1. (idiomatic, rhetoric) A type of tautology in which an item is explained in terms of the item itself, only put in different (usually more abstract) words.
    • The inevitable next suggestion -— that aesthetic experience is distinguished not by pleasure at all but by a special aesthetic emotion can be dropped on the waste-pile of "dormitive virtue” explanations1968, Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, American Philosophical Association, page 6
    • Solidity now has all the defects of a dormitive virtue, obscurity, unobservability, something-we-know-notwhattery — and none of the advantages of a dormitive virtue1998, Rae Langton, Kantian Humility: Our Ignorance of Things in Themselves, page 176

Examples of dormitive virtue in a sentence

  • Because (1) is postulated and at the same time used as a covering law, the putative explanations are vacuous in the sense in which explanatory appeals to dormitive virtue are.2003, Henry E. Kyburg, Mariam Thalos, Probability is the Very Guide of Life, page 66:
  • Now admittedly, this has the look of a dormitive virtue argument: the reason the intellect can recollect its own activity is that it possesses just such a recollective capacity.2013, Charles Bolyard, Rondo Keele, Later Medieval Metaphysics: Ontology, Language, and Logic, page 147:
  • But if talk of such facts just arises via hypostatizations out of the relevant truths, then the facts posited can't explain the truths except via a blatant dormitive virtue explanation.2021, Karen Bennett, Dean W. Zimmerman, Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, volume 12, page 29:
  • Fitness is not the empty idea of a dormitive virtue.2021, Richard E. Michod, Darwinian Dynamics: Evolutionary Transitions in Fitness and Individuality, page 186:

Synonyms of dormitive virtue

Forms of dormitive virtue

pluraldormitive virtues

Origin of dormitive virtue

A calque translation of Latin, virtus dormitiva, coined by Molière in The Imaginary Invalid. In the play, he lampoons a group of physicians providing an explanation in macaronic Latin of the sleep-inducing properties of opium as stemming from its "virtus dormitiva".

Questions about dormitive virtue

What does dormitive virtue mean?
Dormitive virtue means a type of tautology in which an item is explained in terms of the item itself, only put in different (usually more abstract) words.
How do you use dormitive virtue in a sentence?
Because (1) is postulated and at the same time used as a covering law, the putative explanations are vacuous in the sense in which explanatory appeals to dormitive virtue are.
What part of speech is dormitive virtue?
Dormitive virtue is a noun.
What is the plural of dormitive virtue?
The plural of dormitive virtue is dormitive virtues.

Words near dormitive virtue in the dictionary

  1. dormition
  2. dormitions
  3. dormitive
  4. dormitive principle
  5. dormitive principles
  6. dormitive virtue
  7. dormitive virtues
  8. dormitives
  9. dormitoria
  10. dormitories
  11. dormitorium

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dormitive virtue (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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