Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use dictum in a sentence

13 example sentences · noun

Dictum means an authoritative statement; a dogmatic saying; a maxim, an apothegm. Example: “She accepted unquestioningly the dictum that a woman's place is in the home.”

Examples of dictum by meaning

nounAn authoritative statement; a dogmatic saying; a maxim, an apothegm.

  • Ivatt's old dictum.1951 July, “British Standard Locomotives”, in Railway Magazine, page 438
  • 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.1992, Arthur Coleman Danto, Beyond the Brillo Box, University of California Press, →ISBN, page 5

More sentences with dictum

  • She accepted unquestioningly the dictum that a woman's place is in the home.From the entry unquestioningly
  • Mostly technical jargon and arbitrary fortune-cookieish dictums on violence and heredity.2014, Geoffrey Girard, Cain's Blood: A Novel, page 42. From the entry cookieish
  • All the Chassidic dictums about life were racing through my mind.1996, Tzvi Jacobs, Truths Revealed: Modern Day Stories of Faith & Miracles, page 10. From the entry everything happens for a reason
  • Despite these words of caution regarding the famous dictum in Weaver v.1970, The Origin and Development of the Negligence Action, page 14. From the entry blamelessness
  • Having regard to this dictum it is clear to me that the plaintiff cannot rely on negotiorum gestorum to recover damages.2001, Maritime Motors (PTY) LTD v Von Steiger and another, 2001 (2) SA 584 (SE) @ 600. From the entry mala fide
  • I recalled the dicta of certain profoundly experienced men, that evil would come of their telling all they knew.1960, Gottfried Benn, Primal Vision: Selected Writings, New Directions Publishing, →ISBN, page 37. From the entry anteverbal
  • Ehrlich's dictum of horror autotoxicus makes no claim that autoantibodies may not be formed; it only suggests that they are somehow prevented from acting.1989, Arthur M. Silverstein, A History of Immunology, →ISBN, page 163. From the entry horror autotoxicus
  • The triumph of the Spockian dictum of a privatized child-rearing world, shorn of political concerns, may, in part, explain the vehemence with which Dr.1988, Nancy Pottishman Weiss, “Mother, the Invention of Necessity: Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care”, in N. Ray Hiner, Joseph M. Hawes…. From the entry Spockian
  • Owing to his obiter dicta having to be filtered through a zareba of white hair, it was not always easy to catch exactly what Mr.1961, P. G. Wodehouse, chapter 7, in Ice in the Bedroom, New York: Simon & Schuster, page 52. From the entry zeriba
  • This factish, leftish derivation of the old dictum, “Art is art precisely in that it is not Nature,” by wrongly interpreting the word Nature, utterly betrayed the master's poetic sense.1971, Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Henry Sullivan, Genius and the Mobocracy, page 158. From the entry factish
  • And if you want my obiter dictum I should say the biggest thing in W.S. enigmas is waiting patiently there for some bright boy to come along and scoop it.1927, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], Max Carrados Mysteries. From the entry obiter dictum

Meaning of dictum

  1. noun An authoritative statement; a dogmatic saying; a maxim, an apothegm.
  2. noun A judicial opinion expressed by judges on points that do not necessarily arise in the case, and are not involved in it.
  3. noun The report of a judgment made by one of the judges who has given it.

Full definition of dictum

Questions about dictum in a sentence

How do you use dictum in a sentence?
Dictum is used as a noun. For example: “She accepted unquestioningly the dictum that a woman's place is in the home.”
What is a short sentence with dictum?
“Ivatt's old dictum.”
What does dictum mean?
Dictum means an authoritative statement; a dogmatic saying; a maxim, an apothegm.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dictum (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use dictum in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/dictum. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.