Didactic

//daɪˈdæk.tɪk// adj, noun

adj, noun ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A treatise on teaching or education. archaic
Adjective
  1. 1
    Instructive or intended to teach or demonstrate, especially with regard to morality.

    "didactic poetry"

  2. 2
    Excessively moralizing.
  3. 3
    Teaching from textbooks rather than laboratory demonstration and clinical application.
Adjective
  1. 1
    instructive (especially excessively) wordnet

Example

More examples

"More than once during the years that I had lived with him in Baker Street I had observed that a small vanity underlay my companion's quiet and didactic manner."

Etymology

From French didactique, from Ancient Greek διδακτικός (didaktikós, “skilled in teaching”), from διδακτός (didaktós, “taught, learnt”), from διδάσκω (didáskō, “I teach, educate”). By surface analysis, didact + -ic.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.