socratize

Verb capitalized: Socratize

Socratize (third-person singular simple present Socratizes, present participle Socratizing, simple past and past participle Socratized)

1. To be like Socrates.
   • ...they started up a-stare At the half-helot captain and his crew —Spartans, "men used to let their hair grow long, To fast, be dirty, and just — Socratize " — Whose word was "Trample on Themistokles!"1887, Robert Browning, Red Cotton Night-cap Country: Aristophanes' Apology
   • In this case the principle fails because there is (to put the anti-Fregean's case in Fregean terms) nothing that does not Socratize if and only if wisdom does Socratize.2008, Richard Gaskin, The Unity of the Proposition, page 271
   1. To explore an idea by probing questions.
      • Socrates is satisfied to discuss with good sense, and is willing to examine, and to appeal to reason rather than to authority.” Then he asks himself if he cannot “Socratize” too, and the revolutionary standard is unfurled.1884, Christiana Bridge, History of French Literature, page 110
      • It is the teacher's duty to assign tasks to warn and to chastise; one favorite Pestalozzian method was to "Socratize," or, catechizing for cultivation of intellect and spiritual exercise.1917, Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, Teachers' Problems and how to Solve Them
   2. (rare) To sodomize.
      • Turning both side ways, our genitals in a heap, the sight overwhelmed me, yet lust, a desire to Socratize him – as nearly as I can define my sensations – scarcely entered into the confused and lustful combinations, caused by my clasping him as if he were a woman.c. 1888, “Walter”, My Secret Life; republished as My Secret Life, volume 3, 1995, →ISBN, page 283
      • After he had done considerable sucking, I took up another whip, laid on a second time and socratized him again, he knelt as before and returned to his licking, and so it went, each of us doing his part at least fifteen times over.1966 [1785], Marquis de Sade, translated by Austryn Wainhouse and Richard Seaver, The 120 Days of Sodom and Other Writings, page 448