indoctrinate

indoctrinate

Audio pronunciation

 
verb|in-DAHK-truh-nayt
 
What It Means
 
To indoctrinate someone is to teach them to fully accept the ideas, opinions, and beliefs of a particular group while categorically rejecting other ideas, opinions, and beliefs.
 
// The video series attempts to indoctrinate younger audiences with ahistorical and unscientific ideas.
 
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Examples of INDOCTRINATE
 
"They worry about being 'cut off' from poetry, particularly by the jobs that they need to sustain their daily lives and that they fear may quietly indoctrinate them into a contrary value system." — Katy Waldman, The New Yorker, 2 Feb. 2026
 



 
Did You Know?
 
Indoctrinate means "brainwash" in most contexts today, but its meaning wasn't always so negative. When the verb first appeared in English in the 17th century, it simply meant "to teach"—a meaning linked closely to its source, the Latin verb doc;re, which also means "to teach." (Other offspring of doc;re include docile, doctor, document, and, of course, doctrine). By the 19th century, indoctrinate was being used in the sense of teaching someone to fully accept only the ideas, opinions, and beliefs of a particular group.